Crazy
by nohfase
Summary: “Everything was custom, no labels or anything.” Joker gets himself a personal tailor.
1. The Girl

**Notes: **

I know that there are plenty of other stories, but I hope this is at least worth a glance. It probably isn't but, eh. Anyway, I hope those who read it enjoy it.

Right, well then. It's a Joker and an OC, so I hope that's not a Mary-Sue (please yell at me if she is) and I hope I characterize the Joker well later on. My OC swears a lot, so there will be a lot of foul language from her. She uses some Caló slang and unfortunately, I'm only familiar with some of the slang so there won't be a lot of it.

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_The Girl_

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It's the early hours of morning, maybe three o'clock but I don't check to make sure. I'm stitching a custom skirt for a high roller lady in Gotham City, one who wanted a skirt made of lace and leather for some soiree. I'm hunched over the damn material that cost an arm and a leg and I can't help but marvel at how they can allow money to just burn like that. Uncomfortable knots form at the base of my spine and my neck, and shoulders. I don't stretch yet. I want to wait until I'm done with the last fittings so I can savor my joints popping with release.

My cigarette is halfway finished but it went out. There's a cup of cold tea near my knee that I haven't drunk from in over an hour.

I scratch at my hip before pulling the thread taut.

The woman was fucking bug nuts crazy, period – the materials alone cost as much as my month's salary. She wants an asymmetrical skirt – an attached leather belt about three inches wide and then spider webbing for the material. Sheer, sleek, elegant and unique she says – it's probably for the Bruce Wayne Hallo's Eve party that's all the rave on the news. Fucking rich-boy Bruce Wayne – I don't give a crap about him.

I prick the side of my thumb with the needle by accident but I don't do anything. My fingers are as calloused as a farm boy's from years of work, being bent over materials and sewing and playing housemaid to people – like that _puto_ Gary fucking Keller, my very first employer when I'd been a cleaning maid – I hate. So needless to say, a prick on the finger won't have me slumped over like Sleeping Beauty.

I squint and run my fingers over the stitching once I tie off the thread again and snip it neatly. I try to make sure my work is straight and not exactly perfect – perfect is a factory line production. Real quality comes from a single person breaking their back over a skirt. It's a personal motto that's worked out for me.

My stitching will never be as good as my mother's. I know that, and I'm completely at peace with that fact because frankly my mother was a droid her entire life. An organic machine that rarely spoke, never slept or ate and worked about sixty hours or plus a week. Her work was beautiful and flawless, customized and imaginative that spoke a far cry from her plain, dusty Hispanic-Indian looks and her white canvas blank personality.

I look at my own work. It's good, I know and it's probably enough to brag about and it goes up the side a little crookedly, but only just so and the threading is at an odd pattern. I kind of like my style. Sometimes that is, especially when I think of my mother, speaking of her makes me need a smoke like the addict I am.

I reach forward and let my back pop, it sighs with me and I arch back, trying to make the most of it. My half finished cigarette bobs in my lips when I light it again. I finally look at the clock. It's five thirty. I crack my neck and roll my shoulders like I'm preparing myself to go kick some ass, which, in this side of Gotham wouldn't be too hard to believe.

Gotham was after all a societal cesspool made with building blocks of a corrupt police force, megalomaniacs and just the plain shit-scum of the earth.

I inhale and roll over, get up with a satisfied grunt when more noises emerge from my joints. I scratch at my thigh when I wander over to the fridge and pull it open. Not fearing that I'll sound like a complete pig, my fridge is stocked enough for a family of five – defrosted ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, avocadoes, oranges, chili peppers, kimchi and a whole lot of other crap I'll eventually eat my way through. I yank out a couple of eggs, chorizo, some cheese and an onion.

I heat the pan and spray it with Pam. The eggs are cracked, beaten and tossed into the pan and I make myself a regular huevos chorizo breakfast. Somewhere along the line, I spit my cigarette butt into the sink.

When it's finished, it's almost six so I turn the television on. Gotham City News – it's a perfect way to start the day.

Chewing on my breakfast and sipping (cringing) on my cold tea, the newswoman reports that a rapist is running rampant and that the GCPD are doing their absolute best to catch him. I choke on my eggs when they mention Bruce Wayne's Hallo's Eve party in a flash that has the woman flushed a little. Bruce goddamn-rich-boy-born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth Wayne, I really resent and envy him; for the simple fact that he doesn't have to break his back in order to pay rent like all the rest of Gotham City.

I swallow my breakfast down, inhaling it because now I'm in no mood for the news with Bruce Wayne's face flashing becoming smiles and winking playfully at the woman who finally got an interview with him. I flip the television off and clamber up, leaving my dirty dishes in the sink, to dress for work.

I don't necessarily hate my workplace. It's not that, but I never imagined that I would continue to be so low on the goddamn totem pole of life when I grew up and moved away from LA to live with my uncle for a while. I'm a tailor, that's it – I always thought that maybe I could be a nurse, or be designing my own clothing line named _Una Chica_, or even for the sad hope of being a trophy wife for a wealthy man.

None of it – no wealthy man who thought I might be exotic enough for a trophy position, not enough creativity to create my own clothing line and not enough brains to actually make an effort in education so I won't have to do shit jobs the rest of my pathetic life.

Growing up, the only classes I did well in were PE, home economics and English – I didn't fail them even though I still got D's and C's in them. In English I was crap at writing essays, but I could interpret well enough and I liked to read. I was good at soccer, but my grades wouldn't allow me on a team, and I was good at housework; cooking, cleaning, sewing.

It counted for squat though because that wasn't vital to the lifestyle I'd led in Jr. High; it hadn't been important until I was a sophomore in high school and just enough over the hill that even though I'd changed some, it didn't matter. My teachers all considered me a _swata_ anyway.

I shove myself into a skirt that is suspiciously getting tighter around my hips and button up a white blouse. My pantyhose choice is tan or black – I choose tan for the sake of the fact that it's not any kind of sexy dress up time, and it looks professional. I roll them up carefully – as much as I like them, they're still a pain in the ass because they have to be rolled up gently and slowly or else the damn things tear.

I wear pumps – black pumps because this is Gotham and I can't run very well in stiletto heels. I brush my teeth and pop a mint in my mouth before going to the living area.

I wrap Ms. Nose-Stuck-Up-Her-Ass's order in tissue paper and place it in a canvas bag delicately. Not so delicately, I grab my tank-purse and shrug it over my shoulder.

It's six ten when I look at my kit-cat clock. I tie my hair up in a lazy bun and leave my apartment, locking it behind me.

My morning routines are usually the same, have breakfast, get dressed and walk to Ming's Tailor shop. The old Chinese woman is a sturdy thing – all knobby bones and sharpness about her. Rumor was, once when she'd been held up; she somehow tricked the robber into a Chinese Finger Trap and then called the police on him. I wouldn't put it past her really.

I stood at the crosswalk, next to some tired looking businessman. From the bags under his eyes, he probably stayed up all night going over stocks and making spreadsheets. He looked at me and gave me a wobbling smile. I smiled a little back. Insomniacs coming together in Gotham.

The little white man flashed and everyone crossed.

Something out of the corner of my eye catches my attention. Across the street in a small alley, a man, chubby and pale faced, is holding his hands up and blabbering to a taller, much leaner man who was hunched over him. I see the glare of a knife. I'm not surprised or shocked or horrified – this is what I'd known ever since I'd moved to Gotham.

The _panzón_ sees me looking and pointedly stares at me.

The other man, his stance aggressive but almost whimsical turns to me slowly, back still hunched. I freeze when I see the Glasgow smile. Not a person you want to fuck with, I remember the _un_ _vatos_ _locos_ on my childhood street with their gang scars and tattoos. It makes me take a teetering step backward, the countless number of times they'd threaten to beat the shit out of me or the times when I had to walk home at night and they'd be there, drinking or fighting. The worst times were when it was quiet on my street. Whenever it was quiet, everyone knew there was going to be a gang war soon.

The Glasgow grinning _lacra_ waves, fingers spread wide and he smiles enough to show his teeth. I see the sharp gleam of his knife, and the trembling man behind him, begging me to help in some way.

In the animal kingdom a smile means "I'll bite." I turn away, look at the ground and stick close to a group pedestrians, ignoring the scene. I could call the GCPD but they wouldn't get to the man, they've got bigger fish to fry like the Batman or the mob. They won't help unless it'll give them five minutes of fame on the television. A single man was being robbed, not the whole bank.

The bottom line is, however that the one with the Glasgow smile is dangerous. Yeah, I already know I'm chicken-shit, a _leva_. And I really, really don't give a rat's ass. I don't care what the _lacra_ does to the other guy as long as he doesn't come after me for seeing.

Survival Tip Numero Uno: Darwinism.

I speed walk the rest of the way to Ming's, I don't stop until I'm behind the counter and Ms. Ming is right there, eyeing me with those slants. "Morning Ms. Ming," she grunts a greeting back at me.

She taps a long nail on the counter, continues to eye me, mutters something in Chinese before she snaps her fingers at me, "Julia, you stay at register today. I have errands. Tell stupid blonde girl she fired if she doesn't shape up." Her broken English makes me like her a little more. I don't know why.

I nod, "Yes Ms. Ming," I lay the canvas bag on the counter and sit on a high stool. Ms. Ming stares, old wrinkled Oriental face crinkling in thought.

"Your chi is off, something bad happen to you?" she doesn't wait for an answer, just shuffles off to the backroom and returns with a pot of tea. "Drink, balance out or else bad luck will follow." Her dangling earrings of gold and quartz are enormous and they clink gently with her nodding head. She pours me a cup and opens her mouth to say something but is cut off from a ring of the door's bell.

I turn and see Sadie. The pretty blonde has her iPod in, and she waves a little before going to the backroom. Ms. Ming eyes her with distaste. She leans in close to me, grabbing at my hair with one bony hand. "Don't let stupid blond girl have tea. I don't like her, she need bad luck for once." She lets my hair go and reaches around for her purse.

Ms. Ming hired Sadie on the grounds only that the girl was good with crochet knitting and okay at threadwork. She lets her obvious dislike for the nineteen year old show plain as day. Sadie isn't actually all that bad. Sometimes though she acts a little higher than me, like when I'd been helping her work on her threadwork she pointed at me and laughed. "I always heard you people were good at this kind of stuff."

I didn't talk to her for a week.

She didn't even mean it in an insulting manner – it was the way she grew up, a little more privileged than me. She hadn't meant to cross a line, how could she when she didn't even know there was one?

Other than the little annoyances I've been teaching her to avoid, she's surprisingly smart; interested in Science mostly. She's enrolled in Marine Biology at a local college.

"Julia, we have big customer coming today." Ms. Ming taps her nail on the counter, eyeing me narrowly. "Mister Bruce Wayne," she has a little trouble with his name, "He want good costume for his party. He coming down for measurements today at eight."

I scowl. I don't want Bruce Wayne here. I don't personally know him, but I do know he's a playboy, an egoist billionaire. "I'll get Sadie to measure" –

"No!" Ms. Ming snaps her fingers in front of my face and grabs me by the cheeks, yanking me closer to face. She smells like green tea and rice and old lady. "Stupid blonde girl will just mess it up, besides she big fan of Bruce Wayne. She'll chase him away!" she lets my face go and waves her arms around. I snort.

"Fine," she pats my cheek with a cold bony hand.

"Good girl, Julia," she says and then glares over my shoulder. I turn to see Sadie holding a plate of small green tea cakes. Ms. Ming yells at her in Chinese before switching to English, "What you doing with that? I say you can eat that?!"

Sadie shrugs and picks one up, licking the whipped cream off the top first. "You always leave them out for us." I envy her almost careless airs.

"I leave out for working girls," she smacks my upper arm, "Not slack-off girls!" she points at Sadie who continues to eat unabashedly.

"Hey! I work!" she protests, cake stuffed in her mouth.

I turn to hide my grin.

"Oh yeah, you work lots! You work your mouth on your cell phone in the back!" Ms. Ming snaps back just as quick.

Sadie huffs and sets the plate down on the counter before she grins, "Bruce Wayne's coming here?" she asks me instead.

Her pretty green eyes sparkle. I shrug and snatch a small cake off the plate. "Yeah I guess," I reply, biting into the cake-sandwich. Ms. Ming sniffs.

"You, you Sadie!" Ms. Ming points at Sadie, "You cannot take his measurements. Julia going to do that. You stay in backroom and practice threadwork!" Sadie frowns at her, eating another small cake. I swear the girl can just keep eating and eating and not grow at all. Fucking high metabolism. I run, do exercises and Yoga, but I eat a little green tea cake? I gain five pounds. My body is ridiculous and worships Murphy's Law.

"I could take his measurements," she said, looking over at me pleadingly.

Ms. Ming shakes her head, "No. I no trust you, blonde girl. You run off most pricy customer and then what? I fire you. _No_."

Sadie scowls and I finish off my snack before sipping my tea. I look outside and see a limo pull up. "_Ay wey_," Ms. Ming looks at me sharply and I heave a sigh. I hold my hands up in surrender. "I get it, I get it. No biting."

Ms. Ming straightens up and sends Sadie away, who steals another cake out of spite. Sadie leans in close, "Tell me his measurements after you're done," she whispered before scurrying off to the back. I send a disturbed look after her.

"Take measurements, and get the materials right away. Let blonde girl handle register." Ms. Ming says, before she waved vaguely in Sadie's direction.

Bruce Wayne walks in with an older looking gentleman holding the door open for him. He smiles at Ms. Ming who bows stiffly at him and his apparent butler. He looks over at me and I smile back. "Hi, I'm Bruce Wayne I called to make an appointment for fittings?"

I curse the fact that he has a great voice and my dislike for him trembles a bit. "Yeah, I'm Julia Hwang, and I'll be the one taking your measurements." I hold my hand out for a handshake.

He takes it firmly and nearly numbs my whole goddamn arm. He squints for a minute, "Korean?" he asks and I nod, "And…Spanish?"

"Mexican-Indian. I'm from LA," I say as if that explains everything and I guess it does because he nods in acceptance of the answer. I hate the fact that I keep staring at him because it contradicts my general dislike for wealthy people. _Swata_ _Julia_ _does it look like you're in the same league?_

His hands leaves mine and I retract it quickly. He turns to the older man behind him, "And this is Alfred," he introduces him, looking quite fond of the old guy.

Alfred inclines his head at Ms. Ming and then at me, "How do you do ladies?" his British accent's got me a little fluttery. I like accents.

I smile a little wider and it doesn't feel so forced, "Fine I guess, how d'you do yourself?"

He smiles and replies back politely, "I am jim-dandy miss."

Ms. Ming tugs on my elbow, and excuses us from the men for a moment. "Julia. When you get to fitting room, seduce Mr. Wayne and have his bastard child. Then he take care of you for the rest of your life." She looks so serious that I can't help but be completely mortified. "Good luck," she shoves me back to them and bows a parting to them before shuffling out of her shop.

I turn to them, feeling embarrassed. Wayne and Alfred stare at me, waiting. "Uh, yeah anyway, the fitting room is that way," I point to a side door and Bruce Wayne and his butler follow me to it. There are mirrors everywhere and needles in small dragon pincushions litter the room. A few chairs and a footrest sit in the plain room.

I feel vestiges of annoyance eat away under my breast. I feel the discomfort of being on a much lower social ranking than the men beside me, and am letting my humbleness guide my actions. I fucking loathe being modest.

"What were you planning on being?" I ask, getting a tape measure and a pen.

Bruce Wayne takes his jacket off and sets it over a chair. He smiles and stands on the footrest. "I was planning on being seduced by you and letting you have my child so I could take care of you the rest of your life." He says it seriously and I blanch. Alfred chuckles in the corner but he manages to sound almost polite about it.

"You, uh, heard?" I clear my throat and play with the tape measure.

Mr. Wayne smiles a little more, enjoying tormenting me, "It's alright, I'm used to it."

He says it to comfort me, maybe. What's on my mind is that he's not talking down to me and it makes me feel like such a self-absorbed bitch for hating a face on a television set.

"What are you planning to be for Halloween?" I ask, trying a little harder to be hospitable.

Mr. Wayne's smile becomes almost sardonic, ironic even, "The Batman."

My eyebrows go up to my hairline. "Really?" my tone is what a mom would say to humor her five year old son's ideals.

He chuckles a little at the tone before shaking his head, "No. I'm planning on being a pirate."

I nod and ask him to hold his arms out so we can start measuring.

Bruce Wayne isn't that bad, if not for his frustrating damn humor that likes to tease people or mock them. So, he still manages to piss me off.

Alfred is probably the only real gentleman I've ever met my whole life. There's this way about him that just makes him endearing.

The measurements finished, we talk about what type of pirate. I suggest cabin boy at first and am infinitely pleased at his rather flustered stammers.

He settles on pirate captain. I tell him I can't do the boots because I'm not a cobbler and I can't do a hat, but everything else I can do. He nods and gives me the money for the material. It comes straight from his pocket.

_Jesus Christ this is his fucking pocket money_.

I smile and slip the money into my purse and we discuss deadlines. The deadline is Halloween, the night of his party. I circle it on my calendar when he tells me. I've got a little over two months.

Not a lot of time for an extravagant pirate costume with all my other in-betweens.

When he and Alfred leave with amiable good-byes, I see a figure just standing at the shop window. People pass by in the background, my brain duly notes but the figure doesn't move. He, it is a man because I recognize him without little terror freezing me to the spot, the _lacra_ just stares in. Scraggly dark blonde hair falls in front of his face and the Glasgow smile on his face isn't the most horrific part of him.

It's his eyes. They're dark, and they've got sleepless bags under them.

I feel my heart skip a few beats. My knees tremble. He's staring right at me. He knows who I am. _He fucking remembers_. My blood stops flowing, it freezes when he opens the door. He walks in with an odd gait, like a hyena with too long front legs and too short back legs, he's hunched over and his hair gets in his eyes.

He's smiling and it's not just the Glasgow doing it for him. _Vato es el Diablo_.

When he walks towards the counter, it's as though he repels light from him, like a black hole and I break one of my fingernails on the counter I'm digging in to. He comes closer without a knife but it doesn't matter. It's instinct. Like how an animal senses an earthquake before it happens. I'm about ready to piss myself while I'm still wearing one of my good pencil skirts.

He stops at the counter, looks at my bleeding nail disinterestedly. He looks up at me under his dirty, greasy hair. His eyes are terrible up close. From my childhood, I remember that scars were nothing to be afraid of necessarily, that they just told of an incidence that was nobody's business. It was the eyes that mattered. Windows to the soul as it were.

He smiles again, very slowly and his scars pucker with the movement.

I think I stopped breathing.

"Hel_loooo_."

…

…

Here are some terms in case anyone needs them:

_Puto_: male whore

_Swata_: idiot

_Panzón_: fat man

_Un vatos locos_: the crazy/dangerous guys

_Lacra_: lowlife

_Leva_: coward

_Ay wey_: Oh shit

_Vato es el Diablo_: The man is the Devil


	2. The AntiJack

**Notes: **

O.O Wow. HoistTheColours, that was the most flattering review I'd ever been given. That was just…ack. It made me pink. Julia is my first real live OC and I'm glad she isn't perfect, but I do hope that she's got enough charisma to keep you all interested in her.

Also, a correction on last chapter's definition for "_puto_" – sorry that was my mix up. It's a gay individual, not a male whore.

Woot. Second chapter, and I hope that this one is enjoyable. Please let me know what you think!

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_The Anti-Jack_

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"Hel_loooo_."

I feel my body tremble, the blood in me doesn't move and I can't bring myself to make a noise. My heart hammers, screaming a silent scream that the mouths of the dead do. It flies in my ribcage like a bird making an attempt to fly away. I don't know whether it's fear of the _vato loc_ in front of me, or the suspicion that my heart will flop out of my mouth and onto the counter, still beating fast.

He's still grinning but when I'm still silent, I see him start baring his teeth.

_Aliviane, aliviane mama_, is all I can think of when this man starts to show his filthy yellowed teeth. He leans closer and his hand shoots out so fast it hurts my eyes. He grabs the back of my head, twining his fingers in my hair and pulls me forward painfully so that we're almost nose to nose. He smells like a wet dog, he smells like blood and death and gore, he smells like what a devil ought to smell like.

"I said hello lit-tle chi-ca." He smiles, grins and bares his teeth. It looks as friendly as a junkyard guard dog. I don't say anything, I think I squeak a little, or make some odd, frightened rattle in the back of my throat and it just makes him start to frown. "Where are your manners, _little lady_?" the words hiss in my ear and my throat tightens, clogs up and my vision narrows – it tunnels and I feel myself going light on fear.

White noise crowds in my hearing, drowning everything else out and I feel light where I am, my body is going on auto pilot to save me from any pain, it is urging against my survival instincts to pass out so that whatever's coming won't hurt so bad.

His nostrils flare like he can smell it, like he's wafting it in. I bet he can, I bet he is. I see his mouth twitch, his scars flinch in response.

"Say hel_lo_ back," his fingernails tear at my scalp.

"H-h-hello," I murmur, I falling and fading and going invisible. I want to sink into the earth and become mud. I want him to get the fuck away from me and _leave right now_.

He smiles again, not showing his teeth, "Atta girl." He's not tearing my scalp from my head anymore and he backs up a little, so we're not that close but he keeps his hand tangled in my hair. "Ya know," he licks his lips and scars just like a dog licks a bleeding wound on its mouth. It's not a neat Glasgow, not by a long shot; it's jagged and torn. It looks like someone meant for it to be painful and ugly for a long, long while.

"Ya know," he says again, conversationally, "I know we don't know each other very uh we-ll bu-t I was wondering if you could uh keep a se-cr-et." He leans in real close and those eyes look right into me, finding all my fear and digging it up and eating it.

I want to tell him that yes I can goddamn well keep a secret, I'll take it to the grave if it means he'll let me live. _No hay pedo_, I want to tell him and I want us to laugh it off like it's something silly, something crazy and then I want him to leave and never come back, maybe get hit by a city bus. I just want him to forget me, so that he can live like a bad memory in my mind, and I want him to _leave_ so fucking badly.

Because dear God I don't want to face him, or his knife.

I manage this sound instead: "Guh."

He just keeps on smiling and says, "I uh knew we could reach an understanding. This best for our re-la-tion-ship." He cackles a little then quiets down, getting serious all of a sudden. "I want you to forget you saw me before this."

I'm already nodding before he finishes his train of thought, I'm nodding so much that I think my head may pop off like a Barbie doll. He thinks he needs to threaten me? I'm from East Los – no threatening needs to be done. He'll be a bad dream. He'll be the boogieman living in my closet. He'll be an invisible man. He'll be a fucking ghost if he wants that.

He puts his forehead on mine with a hard smack and I blink away the bright spots that coalesce in a kaleidoscopic swirl behind my eyes. "I uh know you won't tell. You _know_ better. You are a pro-duct of your _environment_. I can tell, _chica_."

I manage another pathetic little sound in the back of my throat that makes his eyes twinkle with that glitter, the same glitter of a dog seeing a bird with a broken neck. He wants to kill me. In no uncertain terms, he wants to break my neck, probably eviscerate me. I am acting like prey. I don't have canines or claws; I've got hooves and big square teeth. I am not a carnivore and no amount of acting will convince this _mono_.

He gets this little eureka moment then, and he starts to smile, starts to bare his teeth, "You're a tailor ain't cha?"

I nod a little, and he says, "Good. What a co-inky-dink. Ya see _chica_ I've got this little problem. I don't like the _clothes_ I'm wearing. I want something a little more _meaningful_, something colorful, something like me! You know what I'm talking about right?" he yanks on my head so that my head flops like a doll's. "You don't make much money, but you work with what you go-t. I respect that. So, see I've got all this _money_, this-this money I don't need, but what I need is a good suit."

He lets me go suddenly, so suddenly that I fall on the counter, my teeth clack together audibly and I bite my tongue because of the drop. I taste copper. He laughs, "You're a clumsy thing aren't ya?"

I look up at him, and he fishes something out of the back pocket of a pair of ratty old jeans. He slaps it down on the counter. It's money, green and brown. Splashes and speckles and stripes of red spots and some brown where the red already dried dirty the already foul money. I think of the _panzón_ I didn't help earlier and I'm still numb to the fact I may have caused his death, and I regret not calling the cops on this guy. I might have been able to put him far from me then.

I've barely heard a thing he'd been saying since he dropped me. I'm numbing myself. I can't feel my legs. I don't think I've got legs anymore, or a torso, or arms. I think I'm a head on the countertop.

"I need a suit." Horror shocks me still and my ass end falls off of my high barstool so that I collapse in a heap on the floor.

Sadie, thank God, won't come out to check because she'll have her iPod on full blast while still wearing it. At least, I hope it stays that way. I have no idea if he'll cut her throat into a smile, something wide and dark like a baby's toothless smile, but weeping blood.

He looks over the counter. "Is it the scars? Is that why you're afraid? Because of my nasty old _scars_?" he asks, and my heart freezes, drops from my ribcage to land somewhere in another dimension.

"N-No," they aren't, although they're part of it. The question he asks is a Catch 22, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

He hops over the counter and flicks his switchblade out, holds it to my mouth, but then he cocks his head, shakes it and reconsiders. The blade ends up at the corner of my right eye. "Don't ah _lie_ to me now. I don't like to be lied to. I _don't_."

_Chale, nel, nel, nel, aliviane. Aliviane __Jesús_.

I'm about to piss myself again. I want Gabriel to come from the sky and sing me softly to death, to strike the _gabacho_ down with his lantern; I want my second ex-boyfriend to hold me, I want the nightmare to end. "It-it-it's n-not the s-s-sc-scars." I manage out, _Fantastic_, I think, _now if only I could manage to not get killed because he's touchy. _

The blade digs into the soft flesh near my eyeball. "Then what is it?" he questions me, softly as if he weren't holding a sharp mother fucking instrument to me.

"_Tú_ _ojos_," I say it without stuttering because I say it so quietly.

He leans in quietly, "You're lucky I understood that, or else I'd give you prettier _ojos_." He lets me go and I flop onto the ground, breathing hard and praying to God that I won't die before fifty. "Now then," he says, standing and he slides the knife away to some secret place, looking down at me. "Let's get my measurements shall we?" he cocks a brow and runs his hands over his body like he was showcasing himself.

I can't move because my muscles won't listen, my brain has shut down due to technical difficulties in the uniform of a raving maniac. He leans down, eyes sharp and deadly and fatal. "_Ge-t u-p_," he snarls, baring his teeth.

I reach for the bottom of the stool and I have to use the wall, the counter and the floor to get up. My knees won't stop shaking. I see the blood-money out of the corner of my eye. I try not to scream. I haven't cried in years, since I was a little girl, but right now, I think I might. I think I need to.

I stumble into a full upright position and he cocks his head at me, curious then a smile tugs at him, makes the scars pinch and pucker and pull, "You're from East LA aren't you?" I nod, shakily, slowly because I can't talk. My tongue is numb, dead, it's dumb and I can't do anything. "I thought so. I could tell. That," he circles a finger around the general area of his face, "look in your eyes says so."

There was a moment, an almost calm moment where I wasn't that afraid and he wasn't about to rip my liver out with his bare hands so he could cook it later with fava beans and Chianti.

"Lead the way," he said, waving his hand out behind him theatrically and bowing a little. I march on trembling legs to the fitting room without bending my knees because I know that if I do, I'll fall down. He follows and I can't stop the prickle of unease that breathes a cold sweat down my neck, whispers disaster and fear into my ear, feeding the poison.

I open the door to the fitting room and loop the measuring tape around my neck. For a moment, I imagine it's a noose and that it tightens. I blink the thought away and the _mono_ goes past me, in that strange walk. He steps on the stool and looks down at me, he's not smiling anymore. I can't read his face but I don't stare long enough to be sure. I don't want him thinking I'm looking at his scars when I'm looking at his eyes – those fucking devil eyes from somewhere just as dark as hell.

"H-Hold yours arms out, please," I consciously try to put my stutters away, away where he won't be able to see them, see the cracks in my paper armor so he won't lunge for my throat and tear me to pieces. He lifts his arms and his head hangs down. He looks like a scarecrow. I approach with the tape measure and I reach for the pen I stowed away in my hair.

His hand snatches out lightning quick and grips my wrist, twisting it and forcing me to my knees. I almost scream but a hand slides over my mouth almost gently. "What were you reach-ing for?" he asks, almost softly.

I see the promise in his eyes. My mouth moves soundlessly behind his hand, mouthing apologies he doesn't even damn well deserve, but I give them anyway. He removes his hand. "_What_?" it's a command, a snarl, a vow to tear my limbs off.

"Pen, my pen. I, I was, I was reaching for my pen." I move my other arm slowly behind my head and his eyes track it. I pull my black pen from my mass of tangled hair that had come undone when he'd scared the shit out of me earlier.

He lets my wrist go and stands up again, arms out and his head hangs again. I get up, with a little difficulty and my wrist throbs angrily at the movement.

It's a painful process but I write his measurements on my other arm, the one without Bruce Wayne's measurements.

When he steps down, he turns to me and leans over me. I cower back but I click the pen again so the sharp tip is out. Old instincts from my _perrucha_ days are stirring because of these turn of events. My left breast stings in remembrance. His eyes flick down at the sound of the pen, then back up at me, he starts to smile but he doesn't bare his teeth. "Tsk, tsk, tsk," he waggles a finger at me, as if chastising me for being bad.

His hand goes to his back pocket and my reaction time it noteworthy. I flinch back and bring the pen out to my side, bend my knees and ready my body for the worst. I'm preparing to stab him anywhere and then run the fuck away. _This_ is the reason I wore pumps.

He sees it, raises his eyebrows and throws his head back to cackle. He sounds like a hyena, angry and happy, terrifying and pitiful all at once. "No, no _chica_. I'm getting my i-_deas_ out for you." He withdraws clipping from various magazines.

He shoves them at me and I look at him before I start to leaf through them; a vest once white but colored a medium shade of green with various swirls on it, an undershirt colored blue, purpled trousers and a once black but now a purple gentleman's coat with tails. I spy a picture of gloves, purple leather gloves under it.

I peer up at hesitantly. "All of it?" I'm afraid to ask too many questions.

He nods slowly, as if he were speaking to a child who didn't quite understand. "Al_l_ of it," he waves his hand flippantly.

I lick my dry lips. I suddenly realize I'm parched, because now my body is getting its feeling back slowly. I am also humiliated to find that I feel that the crotch of my underwear feels wet.

I ask the dreaded question I hate myself for asking, "When?"

He grins then, showing his teeth that aren't anything like big square herbivore teeth. This beast eats its stuff raw and red. "How about…" he sucks on the inside of his scars that make a sickly sound and his eyes rolls about in his head, the _mono_ rocks on his heels. "In two weeks."

I've been punched in the stomach. _Two weeks_? Two weeks to make him a monster like this? I look down at the glossy clips in my hands. I turn my eyes up to the ceiling. _Hijole_.

A hand wraps around my jaw and forces me to look into dark eyes. They're a dark brown, with some green and yellow. He has dark hazel eyes. He has the devil's eyes.

"Are you _praying_?" he asks, seriously.

I tremble, "I think I need to."

He throws his head back and laughs then shoves me away so that I bounce on the wall I fall into.

I watch him, and he watches me back. "I'll be uh checking in, you know, and remember. Two," he holds up two fingers and wriggles them, "weeks, remember that _chica_."

He walks out of the room and I wait until I hear the bell on the door ring again.

I slide down the wall and curl up, knees pushing uncomfortably at my mouth and nose. I finally feel the loss of my fingernail when I look down at my hand; the blood had clotted and left drying flecks around the surrounding skin. I had torn it off to the quick, which was still left raw. Not including part of the nail that doesn't cover the quick, I ripped half of it off.

I bet that if I decided to look for it, I'd find that nail piece lodged in the counter.

The thought makes me sick.

It makes me tremble at how much fear he squeezed from me.

The crotch of my panties feels hot, wet and the self-disgust is immense.

I inhaled and exhale, but stop the exercise when I feel the back of my throat itch. I use the wall, feel on it and stumble like a newborn colt from the room to the front for my purse. I don't look in it; I just drag it limply with me on my trip to the restroom. I feel like a doped up mental hospital patient. I wander to the backroom, where patches and rolls of materials and various sewing machines and needles and a small fridge are.

I aim for the restroom. I aim for solace of the small, clean restroom that smells like lemon and green tea. I want the handmade face towels, the ones Ms. Ming made herself, the ones with fat dragons and Chinese symbols I don't understand. I want to drop my face in one and not cry.

I pass Sadie who's bobbing her head and humming loudly, practicing her threadwork. Her corn silk hair is beautiful, some distant part of me thinks while I enter the bathroom. She doesn't notice.

I almost throw up, I can feel the acid at the back of my throat, but I don't. I put the lid of the toilet down and sit down, slump and reach over to lock the door. I dig in my purse for my cigarettes and my lighter. I pop one in and light up.

I inhale shakily and release it in a gust; the filter is pinched between my trembling fingers.

I close my eyes and puff a little more before I pinch it off, throw the burning section in the sink and I toss the cigarette back in my purse. I look through the innards of my purse; cigarettes, a lonely tampon, Mace, a Swiss Army knife, a small sewing kit, make up, my cell phone, two lighters and a pen. No extra panties, even if it sounds stupid, I'd hoped against hope that there would be.

I lean back and close my eyes before I get up, turn around and lift the lid of the toilet. I settle back down. _You're a big girl. And you pissed yourself. You pissed yourself. I hope I won't need Depends._

I hike my skirt up and pull my panties down, expecting a yellowed stain of shame but I see red. I stare, and it stares back accusingly. It isn't piss. It's blood. It's blood.

I throw my head back so fast that I crack it against the rack with the small hand towels and toilet paper and extra hand soap, and I start to laugh. It's hysterical and part terrified, part disbelieving, part something I don't understand. It bubbles up and up and flows out, out, out like a boiling pot.

It's over a week early.

That _ojete_ scared my period right out of me.

I feel myself getting ready to cry so I suck it up and don't breathe. I fix a tampon in me and I reach up for a face towel. I press my face in it. I breathe in. It smells like Ms. Ming and jasmine detergent. It smells safe.

I lose track of time. I don't know how long I stay in there, pressing my face to that embroidered cotton, just breathing and being glad that I can still do that. When I finally do get up, I take my skirt off to make sure there were no accidental spills. There weren't, I'd figured as much since it came on rather suddenly with not much output but I didn't want to stain a good skirt.

I fix my hair, my shirt, smooth my skirt and check my pantyhose to make sure they didn't tear. I put lip gloss on, mascara, and I pinch my cheeks to force color back in my face.

Satisfied, I lean back to take my reflection in.

I look healthy, if a little pale compared to my usual olive coloring and my eyes are a little red, like I've almost cried and I see the marks of fear still in my eyes. My hair still looks tangled, so I put it back up in a loose bun. I grab my half finished cigarette from my purse and put it behind my right ear, then stick my pen in my hair.

I stare at my reflection.

I am Julia Hwang. I am of colored nationality. I am of Mexican-Native American-Korean ethnicity. I am East Los. I just had the fuck scared out of me. I don't know who he was. I know only that I will see him again.

I purse my lips, staring at myself. _Águila Julia, águila_. _Águila_.

I exhale, gather my purse and vacate the restroom. I leave and see that Sadie is still humming but is now also pretending to be a mean guitarist. She doesn't notice me and it makes me smile; seeing her mouth to words passionately, dance to it like a little girl who doesn't know someone's watching her.

I leave her be and sit on my stool, pour another cup of green tea and work on another cake, watching people pass. I'll get Bruce Wayne's materials later. I'll get them when my knees stop shaking entirely. I'll get them when I go get the materials belong to the _mono_.

I look down at the bloody money set before me, all crumbled up in twenties and fifties. I unroll them. There's a deposit of eight and a half hundred, in Franklins, Jacksons and Grants. In the middle of all of them, there is a small card. It is a joker card. The jester wore a cockscomb and clothes patterned in a motley fashion of red and black, and he held an apple that had a missing piece in one hand. The apple had the head of a black serpent coming out of it.

I turn it over, and there's a demented smiley face with black eyes and a red smile. Under it, it says in a script that's neat and glamorous: _Sincerely, the Anti-Jack_.

It looks like someone kissed it with red lipstick below. I feel a little faint, but I shrug it off and cram the rest of my green tea cake in my mouth and chase it with hot tea.

The blood money on the counter is swept into my purse, on the opposite side of Bruce Wayne's. It's tucked away in a little pocket with a little Velcro flap over it. I'll go pick the materials up tomorrow and start on the colorful beast of clothes that the _ojete_ wants.

I don't think I can be seen in public today without someone knowing something was wrong. Even if this is Gotham, there can still be empathy and sympathy if one dug deep.

…

…

End notes:

When the Joker refers to himself as the _anti-Jack_, he isn't referring to his name; he is referring to the term "jack" who is a laborer for another; a servant for a union or a king of sorts.

Terms:

_Aliviane_: help me

_Vato loc_: crazy guy

_No hay pedo_: no sweat

_Chica_: girl

_Mono_: demon/a devil

_Chale_: no way (very negative)

_Nel_: no

_Gabacho_: rude term for a white person, similar to cracker

_Tú ojos_: your eyes

_Perrucha_: trouble making girl

_Hijole_: oh my gosh

_Ojete_: asshole

_Águila_: watch out


	3. The Queen of Clubs

**Notes:**

Wow. I am really surprised at the reviews I've gotten. I am so glad this story is doing well, because I'm really enjoying writing it. Thank all of you for the wonderful reviews and you guys rock so much! This chapter is, I admit, not of the best quality, but I needed to introduce the function of the Queen of Clubs as well as a few other things. Even still, I hope all of you enjoy this chapter and let me know if there are any confusions on either the Joker's part or Julia's and I'll try to answer you as best as I can!

…

…

_The Queen of Clubs_

…

…

Chasing down materials in the Fabric Warehouse was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday. While shoving and being shoved by people, I peer at tables with rolls of fabric, something purple or blue or green or black would catch my eye and I'd have to stop and examine it. I find a little something red, a strip of a dingy, almost grungy reddish brown that could go well as Bruce Wayne's belt sash, maybe for a _sundang_ or something dangerous but rather exotic. I hold it in my fingers and press my cheek to it. It was made from a rough type of cotton, something less than rich but considering what Bruce Wayne was going to be, I figure a little roughness around his pretty-boy edges would do him some good.

I still laugh when I imagine him as a pirate. Hah.

I barter with the little Filipino woman, until I brought the price down from ten dollars to five and a half. I open my enormous canvas bag and stuff it to the bottom, juggling my tank-purse on my other side. I look around at all the people milling around and I see it. It looks like a royal purple, but it's just a tad brighter, less blue and more of a purer purple.

I make a determined beeline to it, shoving people bigger than me away and when I get there, the material is an enormous roll, it's crumpled and bunched and it still almost touches the floor. I tremble a little when I reach out to it. When I touch it, there's a small spark on my fingertips and it feels like hope and relief. I rub at it gently, purse my lips. It's not very soft to the touch, but it is good cotton. It looks a little more resistant to wrinkles than most, but it is by far an Egyptian cotton. I bend my head to it, and touch it to my cheek. The fibers scratch a little, but there's an underlying softness to it.

It's tight-knit. It's strong, resistant. I remember the _gabacho_ and his hunched ways, the bony gauntness of him, the absolute savagery in his movements.

The woman, a blonde with dreadlocks and too many piercings in her ears to count snaps her gum and cocks her hip. The price tag on this is seven bucks and fifty cents for every half yard. I probably need the whole fucking roll, for spares of fabric in case I mess up on the gentleman's coat with its tail or the trousers. A rich purple like this, in such good shape, is expensive, but a good fabric adds on the price tag.

I get my game face on; the tough take-no-shit look that seems to work well in Gotham, which basically amounts to this: Bring it on _bruja_. I scowl, cock my hip back and lower my head like I'm about to charge. I see the corner of her eye twitch.

I start to haggle; she shakes her head and goes on a lecture of how expensive, how beautiful and absolutely-fucking fantastic this material. I snap back that if it doesn't have its own goddamn name yet, then it's nothing fucking special. She purses her lip, shakes her dreadlocks and I flinch back. Those things make me think of all the little nasty critters they're probably housing.

So, I do what I've always done best. I make a scene, point and accuse her of trying to cheat me because it isn't soft and it tears too easily. She says I'm lying, so I raise my voice more. If this keeps up, not many people will be buying from her.

The whole roll, which would have come to a total of two hundred and fifty-seven, cost me one hundred and fifty flat.

I walk away, proud and crooked because that fucking roll is heavier than shit and it took up most of my canvas bag. I may need to buy an extra bag for the rest of the fabrics to come.

While I'm browsing through blues with little hexagons, or octagons, the back of my neck prickles. My nostrils flare and I smell fear. _My_ fear. I turn, expecting the _mono_ from yesterday breathing down my neck and holding a switchblade to my eye, but I come up empty. The silk in my hands flutters back to the table, slipping away from my fingers like water. The sensory jilt feels good.

I look back at the material I had blindly groped at, and its base color is a cornflower blue, printed with large majorelle hexagons that link together in a geometrical puzzle pattern. I feel at the silk. Smooth, slippery – something like sand and water; maybe something like Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak would feel. I look at the little demure Thai woman who watches me with big eyes.

I don't haggle, or pester her with the price. This sort of silk needs to be respected because though she be a hard mistress, the reward for stitching her is this: no wrinkles, a strong shirt and the coolest, most tender embrace in clothing that you never thought possible. I pay the woman and feel at the silk. I fold it gently and place it over the purple roll.

For a brief interlude in time, it was as though I was shopping for a regular customer who had unknowingly asked for something spectacularly artistic, a diamond in the rough sort of thing. It passes when I remember what the customer was. A lurching, deformity of a human being; something part jackal, part hyena and part hell; there were no singular words to describe him.

He hadn't explicitly threatened my life, not really, but he will. I know he will. He was dying to tear me to pieces back then, sew me back together and do it all over again.

Growing up where I did, it was a person's eyes that did it. Something that lurks behind everyone's mask. Like a crocodile in dirty river water ready to snap at any unfortunate seabird that may touch the surface.

It is this part of him that gives me reason to run far away and hope to God he can't sniff me out like a bloodhound.

Lost in my thoughts, it's a jolt to my senses when I feel someone brush against me, hands askew and searching for something; a pocket or the opening of my purse, or my gigantic canvas bag. Hands grab at my purse and I turn around, facing the person. It's a younger man, about twenty-something, and he jumps back, holding his hands up and he starts to stutter apologies.

I stare back at him. He has to be the worst fucking pick pocket on the face of the whole goddamned planet. I don't yell at him, or threaten to drag the police in this, but I am more than tempted to threaten to call his parents on him. I scratch at my hip and he shrinks back a little. He stares at me; I stare at him, and then ask, "What the fuck?"

He looks surprised, either at my word choice or at the fact that I said something instead of starting to scream my head off. I squint at him. He's got better hair and prettier eyes than me. Little pretty-boy-winner-of-worst-goddamned-pick-pocket-of-the-century-award prick.

"I just had to um be sure, ya know," he shrugs a shoulder and looks uncomfortable under my scrutiny.

"Be sure of what?" I snap. I am, agreeably, not in the best of moods to deal with this little fucking schoolboy. _Julia mala, he's just a kid_.

He shrinks in on himself a little and mumbles something I don't catch before he runs off, disappearing into the crowd. I am about to huff, stomp away like the little proud gal I am, before something that flutters to the ground in his wake catches my eye.

To say that I am a little more than confused to find the Queen of Clubs staring up at me from the dirty cemented floor of the Fabric Warehouse is a vast understatement. Her serious, drawn and resigned face with lines beneath her eyes glares up at me in all her mundane glory.

I bend at the waist and pick her up, clawing at her sides with what was left of my nails (my singular index nail still torn and currently wrapped in inch thick gauze) to pluck her from the floor before I hold her in front of my face.

There are words in her white background that are repeated over and over and over until they fill the space with red words from a precise pen. _Why so serious? Why so serious? Why so S E R I O U S?_ I swallow the dry cotton in my throat and I twitch my fingers. The utter creepiness of the meticulous, tedious task that someone had appointed themselves to do on the Queen of Clubs is more than a little fucking perturbing.

Something sticky, wet like candy-streaks makes me turn the card over. Red lipstick smears the underside of the card, kisses pressed here and there like a child would and beneath it all; I catch a glimpse of it. _Do YOU know what the QuEeN of ClUbS means? Haha_. _HAHA. HAhaHAhaHA._

_P.S _

_By the way, chi-ca you really should get some sleep. Those crow's feet don't look too nice on your purdy little eyeballs. _

_Sincerely, your bestest pally-wal. _

I feel the blood drain from my face, feel my fingers go cold and clammy, and suddenly my white floral print sheath dress doesn't feel so pretty. The fear from the other day comes rushing back up, holding my head under cold water and sinking into my bones. The chill holds inside of me, and stays.

I work my legs faster, skidding occasionally on my white pumps when I pick up the rest of the materials. I don't want to stay here anymore. Not here, not at the shop, not at my favorite corner cafe, not anywhere.

"_I'll be uh checking in…" _

_He wasn't lying_, I realize vaguely, in some still not-completely-scared-shitless part of me, when I stare down at the Queen of Clubs. I don't know what she means, but I know who probably will.

Sadie.

I'm struggling to balance the materials, and dig around for my cell phone. I slide it open and dial Sadie's number, working my thumb and pressing the phone against my face so hard it may stick. It rings twice and then, "Hullo?"

"Sadie, it's Julia. Do you uh…" the question is now, what can I say without getting gutted? I look down at the Queen of Clubs, holding her hand up as if she knew the answer. I lick my lips and look around, before taking a sharp right.

"Julia? Are you still there?" Sadie's voice comes through and I walk a little slower, trying to will my body into growing a few extra eyes.

"Huh? Uh, yeah, yeah, I'm still here. Look, I was um, wondering, do you know what the Queen of Clubs means?" I remember Sadie had been deeply intrigued by the art of Tarot card reading, and stars and such so she may know what the fucking hell this shit is.

She yawns over the phone and I feel like smacking the crap out of her. _Bruja! Don't give me this shit; it's a matter of life or death! Answer the fucking question before I have to chase down an old Gypsy woman!_

"The" – another little yawn, "The Queen of Clubs? Um…If I remember correctly, she represents self-interest." I blink slowly, staring dumbly at the unavailable crosswalk.

"What?" confused dread sets in and makes a nest.

"Julia, what is this for anyway?" she inquires, curious as a little kitten.

"Sadie, please. Just humor me." I have no idea if telling her will have dire consequences or not, but I am certainly not dying to find out.

"Okay, okay. Party-pooper. Um, yeah, the Queen of Clubs supposedly represents self-interest. You know, All for One, but not One for All?"

Something in me recognizes those traits, so familiar and hateful to myself. I feel the trepidation of my next words, "Keep going."

"Julia, is this for something weird, for like a cult or something? Because I am so telling you, those things are not all they're crack up to be –"

I cut her off at the quick, "_Sadie_."

I hear her sigh and mutter a grouchy "hold on", before background noise and then, "Ooookay, Miss Queen of Clubs is…quite the greedy one. Above all, she looks for comfort and money. All for One, not One for All, self-interests come first…blah blah blah…oh, here's something. The Queen of Clubs is a supposed card personification of Argine."

Argine was a misconception of the name of Argea, wife of Polynices who had been an exiled king of Thebes, and had looked for her husband on a battlefield only to come across his corpse and have him cremated. The Iliad.

The _gabacho_ needs to cross reference his history better in regards to personifying them as his fucking victims. "Is that it?" I ask, still feeling a little fluttery considering I'm still holding the Queen of Clubs, and the fact that I am still maybe a victim of stalking.

"Yeah," Sadie responds. "As payment for this deed, you need to tell me Bruce Wayne's measurements."

"I'll tell you when I come back to work," I respond easily, skipping across the crosswalk in order to keep up with the masses. I can feel my blood rushing like early morning traffic. Bum-bum, bum-bum-bum-bum.

My heart won't stop pounding against my ribs, begging for me to calm it down, screaming for the help I know I won't be able to get.

"What? You're off until Monday Julia!" she protests like a little whiny kid.

I snort, "I'm sure you'll live," I hang up without saying good bye and shut my phone off. If I had stayed on the phone with her any longer, I might've cracked. I'm a _leva_, but I won't knowingly put Sadie in danger. The girl is the little sister I wish I never had.

I need food right now, and I'm trying to concentrate on that rather than the fast pace of my heart, or the terror that stills arcs in my blood. I have no idea if he's still watching me. I don't know what the Queen of Clubs may mean to _him_. I have no idea what I'm going to do. All that I can think of is that I'm hungry, and maybe if I'm eating I'll stop looking over my shoulder.

A few hundred yards ahead lay my destination.

There's this little Thai restaurant that dips in to a kind of basement that does take out only. It is the best Thai I've ever had. I'm going to use the money left over from both Bruce Wayne and the _gabacho_ to buy myself a nice lunch and dinner.

My stomach gurgles, whether at the nausea of remembering who I was currently working for, or at hunger, I don't know and I won't question it.

I look down at the Queen of Clubs with her terrene gaze spearing me. There are parts of the Clubs that bare resemblance to me; self interest, obsession for money and security, and all that delightful jazz. _She's probably a leva too_.

While I pass a garbage can, I toss her in, lipstick smears on my hand and it looks like B-horror movie blood. I have to wait until I'm in the Thai restaurant to wipe it away because I happen to like this dress. I'd made it not too long ago, a stretchy material with big tropical exotic flowers printed here and there.

I turn a corner, go down a small flight of stairs and into a basement joint. I open the door and a small counter greets me, with a cute little Thai boy running the register. He straightens up, "Pick up, or order now?" he says without an accent.

I smile a little. I can feel my skin stretch tightly, resisting the menial task of smiling to a complete stranger who has no idea what the fuck is going on. I want to grab him, shake him and spill my guts out and beg him to help me.

"Order now, I'd like the number sixteen and forty-four."

He nods and goes through the kitchen door, yelling at the chefs in Thai.

I look at the little wooden bench that's in the corner of the shop and I slump down. My canvas bag sags and so does my shoulder, in obvious relief from the burden I'd been carrying. I see a napkin dispenser and steal a few, smearing the lipstick off. I frown at the mulish make up that sticks to my hand like glue, spreading a sickish feeling on my palm.

I let myself lean back, and close my eyes for just a few minutes of sleep.

Time elapses, collapses and becomes the universe's dust particles, swirling endlessly in a torrential, outlandish, prismatic gust that feeds my soul. I am floating. I have no worries. I live vicariously now, feeding off of emotions like happiness and joy, just like the physical parasite I had been when I'd been 'alive'.

I see galaxies and life blossoming before my eyes in my not-dream, nebulas and dwarf planets that shrink in on themselves, then explode in a violent, apocalyptic end.

"Miss? Miss, your order's ready." A hand shakes my shoulder and I inhale sharply, forcing my head up and accidentally colliding with the register boy's forehead. Sharp pain bursts forth and I hiss at the same time he does, both of us leaning away from the other.

"Fuck that hurts, I'm really sorry, ow shit that stings." I mutter almost incoherently but he waves it off and points to the plastic bag on the counter. "How much?"

"Eighteen ninety-five," he responds, going back behind the register and still nursing his forehead, giving me a wary glance.

I slide a twenty and a ten over and say "Keep the change."

It feels good, in a narcissistic way to say that. I've never been able to say, "Keep the change, bucko," like those old-style high roller women from the old fifties movies. They'd been my heroes, chief among them Audrey Hepburn. Cool, suave, sexy, intimidating, intelligent and powerful – these are the women all the teenage girls want to be. When you're eight, or nine, you still believe in love at first sight, or think that there's someone for everyone or happily ever after always exists or that your White Knight or Charming Prince will ride up and make you a princess.

Audrey Hepburn, Betty Page…these were the women I had hoped to follow since the first time I saw _War and Peace_, the first peek I'd caught of a black haired woman in leopard skin. These women who were confident in their own skin and got to the top by using what they had; how I envy them still.

I walk out of the shop, holding my purse, food and giant canvas bag. I feel like a jackass. The figurative and literal meaning of the term. I totter down the street rather awkwardly and look up at the sky. Thunder booms angrily and dark grey clouds swell, puff up like frightened animals. Lightning cracks once like a white-hot whip and the city-people, as one, turn up to the sky that had earlier been so clear and calm.

Something in the marrow of my bones quivers, cowers away and moans.

I shrug it away and start walking faster to my little apartment. A big fat raindrop lands on the back of my neck and rolls down. It rolls coldly down my spine, eliciting goose skin. I walk faster.

People bustle even faster in the start of the rain, shoving and being shoved, holding newspapers and briefcases over their heads, women pop umbrellas out of their purses and those without seek shelter from the coming downpour in shops.

It starts to really come down, cold wet rolling on my dress which is now probably see through and sticking to me uncomfortably. _Fucking hell_. I start jog through the slowly dispersing amount of people on the sidewalk.

My apartment is another block ahead when I see an unmarked white van come streaking down the road like a bat out of hell. It reminds me of the vans that would dump the carved bodies of the _mulas_ on my street or neighboring ones. One of my good _mexa_ friends became one. She did it twice and the third time, she never came back home.

I'm soaked to the bone when I finally get to my doorstep, fumbling with my keys; my blessed Gabriel pendent clinking against the golden cricket Ms. Ming gave me for my birthday. I stick my key in, but my apartment door swings open without me turning it.

It creaks ominously on old hinges but my apartment is dark. I stand outside of the door; lingering and I reach back for my cell phone, preparing to drop kick everything else and run the fuck away from the shadows that creep against my walls.

I step inside quietly, and flip the light. It comes on easily and I blink at the sudden change of brightness. I drop the canvas bag and my purse on the couch and leave my food on the kitchen counter, going for my meat cleaver. It shines in the light just like it does when I'm chopping up a duck, or a whole body chicken.

I hold it to me and start first at my bathroom; I turn the lights on and see nothing. My closet has the same results. I'm skulking around my own apartment with a meat cleaver dressed in wet clothes.

I look in my bedroom to find nothing - my bed is still unmade and stray pantyhose litter the floor like shed snake skins.

I drop my arm and blink, stare out the window and see a dark shape crouching on the other rooftop like a gargoyle. We don't have gargoyles on this side of town, unless it would be the Catholic Church that's a few miles away. I go there sometimes to pray to God to ask for forgiveness of my irrational selfishness towards my fellow man. Or I pray to Gabriel to shine his lantern so I can see where my road is again because I lost sight of it a long, long time ago.

I never receive an answer.

I dismiss the gargoyle as to the mystery of what it may be because I remember; I live in Gotham. It's Freak City here.

I go back to the kitchen and settle my cleaver back in its drawer and I turn to the kitchen counter where I catch sight of it. I cock my head to look down at her with wide eyes. The Queen of Clubs stares up at me balefully, holding her hand up not as if to answer a question but as if to uphold an oath or a pledge.

Beneath her faces, on her midsection there reads in black, scratchy writing that looks rushed and angry and biting; _**Turn me over**_.

I stare at her and she stares back, accusing me of the crimes she too was probably guilty of. _Leva, leva perrucha. Too pathetic to save another life and too stupid to save your own_.

I bite my tongue and look away, look around me, and my stomach roils, heart roars and mind whirls. I have no sense of who I am. I am nauseous, dizzy, tired and so fucking frightened. I look at the arrows that point to the sides of the card. They are furious, and indent the card to the point where they almost seem to tear it.

I reach out to touch it when my stomach finally protests violently.

I hold my hand to my mouth and I rush to the bathroom. I vomit up yellow bile, a fruit tart and a Chai tea I'd bought at a Starbucks earlier. I can barely hold my hair up, and grip the sides of the porcelain at the same time. My throat rattles at the pain and I can't stop. Tears squeeze at my eyes but I push them back, shove them away, _Párelo, párelo, PÁRELO! Aliviane Gabriel, aliviane_.

After I'm done, I sink to the floor on my legs, pressing my temple to the seat and start to dry sob. I want to hold my Gabriel pendent. I want to rub it in my hands.

He'd been in my home. The _lacra_ had entered my sanctuary, the one place where everyone hides from everyone else and is always comfortable in their own skin. He is now crawling under my skin, poisoning my blood and deteriorating my muscles and blackening my bones. He is my Bubonic Plague. He is my cancerous tumor. I want to saw him off viciously.

_He knows where I live. _

It runs circles, laps, miles, light years around my mind in an endless whirr. My mind is a broken record player obsessed with a singular, terrifying thought: _He knows where I live_. Ouroboros doesn't have anything on this.

I slump on the toilet, letting the coolness seep into me, absorbing my body heat and I can't bring myself to get up to turn the card over. It may be a death threat or just a threat. I have neither the stomach nor the courage to turn the Queen of Clubs over to find out.

I close my eyes and try to will back the beautiful universe I'd seen in my short dream.

I see the Queen of Clubs, and her stare pierces my heart for reasons I don't understand. All I know is that it is pure unadulterated terror.

My eyes open and I clench the sides of the toilet seat before I push myself up to wash my mouth out with mouthwash and water. I look at myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes are getting worse.

I look away and walk carefully to the kitchen where the card still lies.

I stand a few feet from her, wary and frightened and angry. He came into my home and invaded my life further. He scares the shit out of me.

My stomach cramps and it's not just my monthly.

I walk to her, slowly as if I were approaching a deadly animal before I grip a corner and flip her over. I can barely believe how scared I am of a playing card but when I bear witness to the writing that is rugged and angry and playful and exact all at once, and when the _lacra's_ grinning face pops up, I still wish for Gabriel to shield me with his wings and take me into the light of his lantern.

_DiD you LosE SoMetHing chi-ca? _

…

…

_Sundang_: it isn't a Spanish word, but it's a Filipino bolo knife

_Bruja_: bitch

_Mala_: bad

_Mula_(s): literally mule, but also a coke mule

_Mexa_: someone from Mexico

_Párelo_: stop it


	4. Long live Caligula

**Notes: **

Someone said I used too many foreign words, so I'll be cutting down on it but not completely considering that's who she is. When she freaks out, she will revert to it. For that, I apologize that it disturbed you. On another note, new chapter! Yay! I'm happy you guys are still enjoying and those who haven't reviewed yet are enjoying it as well because I'm averaging around…300 hits to every chapter. O.O That is so freaking awesome. I hope this chapter isn't a letdown and I hope you all enjoy it!

**4ofcups** since I can't send you a PM, I'll say it here: I'm glad you liked the symbol of the Queen of Clubs because I don't imagine that the Joker would hand out any old card to everybody, he'd probably pick one that would match them. And I am super happy you find her terror entertaining (that sounds wrong) and I'll try to keep it up because I can't imagine having much 'fun' with the Joker myself.

…

…

_Long live Caligula_

…

…

It's a smoggy Sunday. It's two in the morning. I am on my living room floor, stitching together the purple gentleman's coat. I'm bent over it, with a cup of black coffee near my leg, my neck hurts and I've pricked my finger several times. I look longingly at the dusty sewing machine across the room, but Ms. Ming taught me that even though it gets the job done, it snags at the fabric and tears the thread, making it easier to rip. She told me to use it for bigger projects; like dresses.

I don't necessarily mind sewing this thing via machine, but I know better. Which makes me think of how, someway, somehow, he'll know better. That cements the counterargument of why I shouldn't use the sewing machine.

I had written his measurements down on a pad of paper, with Bruce Wayne's and I already cut out the coat. I'm stitching his left arm on since I'd already stitched together two lengths of fabric together and took care of where the buttons would go.

The purple is blindingly rich.

I squint in the light and adjust my glasses. For small stitching, I need small reading glasses so I can be as precise as I can hope to be. I look down through them, lifting my chin so my head is out of my light. The circular ring of the shoulder had always been a tedious task, it has to follow the line of a shoulder and not be exactly a perfect circle, but not too off.

I blink and shift, scratch my shoulder and continue.

It's two in the morning and I'm dressed in an enormous blank white shirt and mysterious boxers I'd picked up in my laundry after I had dried them at the local Laundromat. They've got little spazzed out squirrels running rampant on them so I kept them even though they belonged to a complete stranger who had forgotten them in the dryer. Free clothes were free clothes.

I pull the purple thread tight, and tie it off before snipping it with a small pair of sewing scissors with cranes on them. They'd been my mother's.

I look at the beginning of the coat, plucking at the arm and I concentrate on the line of stitches. It's straight and the stitches run well along the arm and shoulder.

I reach for the other two lengths of fabric that are for the other arm and begin. I start in, tie it off and stitch the sides together, the lengths held together with small pins so I don't fuck up completely.

I put the arm down and reach for my coffee, hating the gritty, bitter taste of it but gulping it down anyway. I hate coffee in general; iced coffee, hot coffee, coffee with sugar, coffee with cream, and black coffee. I don't mind mocha lattes or stuff like that, things with the vague taste of coffee, but I'm more of a tea lady. Chai tea, green tea, jasmine tea, red ginger tea, black tea, milk tea, lemon tea…you name it and I'll probably drink it. Except peppermint tea. I fucking _detest_ whoever thought that putting peppermint in tea would equal bliss.

I shake the thoughts away. My mind is wandering aimlessly again, even with _The Simpsons_ on. Homer belches loudly in the background.

I haven't _really_ slept in a couple years. Nothing traumatic happened; it was just all of a sudden I couldn't go to sleep. I attempted to read Steven Hawking in order to bore myself into sleeping but all that happened was a massive goddamn headache behind my left eyeball. Ever since then, I sleep on and off, two straight hours or so of undisturbed rest and then I wake up, wander around or I stitch up something for my clients or I sew myself something else to wear and I can sell something I'm not particularly fond of anymore, and go back to sleep for a little while.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So here I am, nursing a hot cup of coffee with the lights on plus an overhead lamp so I can be sure of my stitching. I hate it when I have to pull the thread out and start from scratch.

I sit up straighter and stand, letting my back pop from the tense position and crack my neck from side to side.

The relief my body experiences after being cramped in its own skin is always something to look forward to. I yawn and zombie-march to the fridge. I take my glasses off and set them down on my small dining table. I pinch the bridge of my nose and look over at _Her_. The Queen of Clubs stares back and her faces warps, the color that exists in her drains and falls away like rainwater on a leaf before she reverts back.

It makes me remember my mother. The way she rarely slept, rarely ate, the way she went about life stumbling in the dark and praying for a light. I had always been terrified of becoming that woman; this lost soul that the Father at our church had always called her. _Una hija perdida_.

My mother, she hadn't had any mental illnesses that I can remember, but I do remember that she eventually would sleep so little that everything became…disjointed. The world became the not-world and beyond, I became her son and daughter and life and slow death, and when my father passed away –

I'm becoming like her in the little ways. I am my mother's daughter. I have been now for a few years, I realize distantly, in some unexplainable way, I am becoming the woman I didn't know if I should love, hate or put out of her quotidian misery. I am in the same way she had been lost for years, years and years. Maybe she had never been found.

"Shouldn't you go to the police?" a foreign, strange female voice enters my sanctum. "All this stress isn't good for you."

I rub at my eyes and stare at the Queen of Clubs. She stares back at me and her conjoined twin does the same. They repeat their question and statement, their voices mixing. I blink slowly, trying to process this.

"_When you don't sleep Juliana, you see things that aren't really there…you're dreaming, but you're awake. It doesn't make you crazy novia. It doesn't make you crazy."_ I couldn't tell even back then if she'd been trying to convince herself or me.

One of the Queens cough, "I beg to differ. You haven't even the right sense of survival or _duty_ to even go to the police to turn this madman in."

Her twin makes a noise of agreement. "You should march straight to that phone and call them. You've got evidence that he threatened you, and perhaps you ought to check the newspaper. The man he probably killed might be there. That's a case in itself."

I don't say anything to them.

I remember how my mother would sometimes stare at pictures or portraits or sculptures like they were talking to her. Maybe they were, now that I look back.

One of the Queens snap at me, "It's rude to stare don't you know you little priss."

The other Queen waved her hand at me in a blasé manner. "You can't expect her to be very smart if she hasn't gone to police yet, dear."

I lick my lips and back into the kitchen table, fumbling for a chair that I sit down slowly in. The card flips itself up and they give me a disappointedly disgusted look from where they are. I watch with wide eyes. "He'll kill me." I respond, never mind that I'm talking to a playing card, and that it's talking back and standing on its own, it feels good to confess something to anyone or anything that can listen and I won't get killed over.

The top Queen frowns and nods a little, "Yes. Yes he will. He's a rotten person; right down to the little chewed up core of a soul he's got. You don't get eyes like that from just being a little bad."

The bottom Queen nods in agreement, "You should at least talk to the police. They might be able to help you."

I shake my head and thread my fingers in my hair tightly, tugging sharply. I inhale sharply and let my head fall harshly to the table. The pain throbs with my heartbeat. I do it again. And again. And again, until I can numb my thoughts of craziness, paranoia and fright into just simple, good old fashioned physical pain. It doesn't work.

"She's gone completely barking mad," one of the Queens pipes up.

The other sniffs, "As if she hadn't been already."

"True, that," the first admits.

"Why are you both talking?" I say into the table, the old wood absorbing some of the sound. I wait for an answer but it doesn't come. I look up and the card is flat on its back again, and the Queen of the Clubs is silent, solemn and disgusted with the world and herself in general.

I stay on the chair, leaning back into it and curl up into a small ball. I should call the police and beg for help. I don't want him to ever be in my home again. He's invaded my personal space, my sanctuary where I can shed my public skin and be Julia. I want to him to go away like a bad dream. I gnaw at my thumb nail, catching sight of my index finger wrapped in gauze while doing so.

I watch my kit-cat clock, the tail and eyes swinging. The minute hand goes 'tick-tock'.

The more I try not to think about him, the more I do because he's been in my apartment; he's seen a part of who I really am and what I am. He's seen under whatever pathetic mask I've arranged for the outside world to see.

He can see into who I really am.

I gulp down my nausea as best as I can and rise, intent on getting back to work. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my kit-cat clock start to melt.

As I sit and stitch the other arm to the coat, I float on a river of memories that aren't in chronological order and seem to be disorganized, blurry. I remember my mother catching me smoking pot one day and the way she only stared at me and walked away, didn't scold me later or anything. I remember the dead look in her eyes.

I tie the arm off and run my fingers over the shoulder. It matches its twin and looks good. I grab a pair of big orange scissors to start splitting the tail.

As I cut the tail of the coat slowly, I remember Adriana. She made me learn the hard way that beauty is the beast.

I jerk in surprise and look down to see that I accidentally snipped my thumb. Blood wells up in a big fat teardrop. I swallow the bitter taste that is the memory of Adriana and try to concentrate on my task. I take a look at the clock to see that it's five in the morning. I lost track of time again, but I pay it no mind.

I take a lighter to the small imperfect threads hanging down and I burn them away. I use the small sewing scissors to snip away with jagged edges and burn the imperfect edges with my lighter before I take a closer look at it with my glasses.

My eyes burn now, so I close them and set my glasses on the coffee table before I turn to the TV, flipping through the channels with no real destination in mind.

I close my eyes and I start to drift again, pictures flash and flare and burn in my corneas; Adriana, the Queen of Clubs, the Glasgow grinning bastard, my mother.

I see them and more.

My life, in tides of a browning ocean, comes and goes in a swirl that confounds and infuriates me. I hate the bitch that I am. Hate that I hate people with better luck, in better health, better spirits, prettier people, and people with money to really spend. I hate that I hate so discriminately, that I despise the God who doesn't answer me, or the angel Gabriel who hasn't shown his lantern.

I dream of colors: a Tokyo purple sky lit in an eerily incandescent way, buildings that pierce the heart of the sky, a bright green frog with red spots that croaks my name twice before it dissolves into a colorless puddle.

I see millions of the three-leafed clover that symbolizes the Clubs, falling around me like fall leaves, swirling and drooping and creating a world that makes about as much sense as the next, I suppose. A face looms over me, and from the narrowed, dark look it gives me, I can't tell if it's the son of a bitch from the-nightmare-that-has-become-reality or Adriana.

A house of cards crumbles, pale faced kings and queens fall, fluttering around me with the jacks bearing their arms and looking panicked in a withdrawn, knowing way.

A mutant spider that looks like a Spade crawls across my cheek and bites down. Pain spreads like hot water across my face.

I wake; I inhale like I've been underwater too long.

A face looks down at me with a big wide atrocious smile. "He-e-e-e-ey there _chi-ca_," the devil stares down at me and I notice that he doesn't have a switchblade.

The veils of unawareness lifts away and fear kicks in double time.

I make the same whimper a frightened, threatened animal makes and scramble across my couch, clawing at the fabric and tearing the pillows from my way. A hand grips the back of my neck and lifts. I feel like a kitten being picked up by the loose skin of her neck.

I am in the air for a brief millisecond before he slams me painfully against the couch. The strength in that scrawny, roguish frame frightens me. His appearance belies his power. "Ah-ah-ah," he waggles his finger at me and removes my neck. "No trying to run from our con-ver-sa-tion."

My beating heart is at my throat, clawing to get because he is in my home, he is real, he is the devil, he is right in front of me. I sink against the back of the couch and he leans in closer, cocks his head at me curiously; lank and greasy clumps of once curly honey-brown hair press at my forehead. He looks to the side, where the coat lays and he looks back at me. His mouth twitches.

"Work-ing hard, _chi-ca_?" he asks and I flinch away. His breath is hot; it smells of blood and unwashed mouth.

I stop breathing because I can't tell whether it's a threat for sleeping on the job or what and I notice that I'm shaking like a lamb up for the slaughterhouse. "I-I-I"- my broken-record sentence does nothing for his patience.

His hand connects with my other cheek and grips my jaw, "When you talk to some-one, you had better _make sure_ that. They. Can. Under. Stand. You." He shakes my head and then takes his hand away. "Now, then, what were you uh get_ting_ at?"

I can't think properly, I'm short circuiting and my head feels light. I need to run, _the fight or flight_ instinct gave its order a long time ago, but I'm trapped and I already know that if I fight, I will die, without exceptions. My heart is going to burst. My mouth moves soundlessly. He puts his forehead on mine and his hands grip the sides of my head tightly, "_Spi-t it ou-t, chi-ca_," the hiss makes me quake harsher against the couch. His lips pull back to show his yellow teeth.

"_T-Todavía tengo tiempo_," my words tremble throughout but they sound better than they did in English.

I can't even think of how to say the words in English. They are lost on me. I don't remember them correctly. I fear if I speak in English right now, I'll stutter even worse, I'll mess up and he'll slice me a wide, dark smile on my throat to combat the shaking frown on my face.

His lips purse and his eyes narrow. He pulls back from my and his hands tighten on my cranium. I let out a little sound of pain, high pitched and squirm. His eyes are half-lidded when he responds, "_Usted hace_," he agrees and then his mouth twists angrily before he starts to smile. He starts to bare his fangs at me like a junkyard dog.

Still gripping my skull, he forces me up and pulls me along, so forcefully that I think my head may pop off, so that we end up in my hallway, slamming me bodily against a wall.

"_I_" – he slams the back of my head into the wall and my vision bursts in tropical flowers that bloom, "_Don't_" – he lifts and hits the side of my head against the opposing wall, the world tilts, and I think I claw at him, he giggles a little, an angry biting sound, "_Like_" – the other side of my head strikes the first wall again, the world flips upside down and I hurt so bad, "_Speaking Spanish_" – he head butts me and he lets me go.

I fall to the floor hard and tremble. I can't lift my head because vertigo has set in. I curl up in a ball and dry sob, the pain flares in my ears, the rushing roaring sound of my own cries and my blood and heart and white noise, crowding in and shoving at my eardrums. My eyes hurt; the sporadic bursts feel like a severe case of photalgia. Someone has taken a jackhammer to my head to build a city block.

A shadow looms overhead, bearing down on me and blotting out the light. Darkness hath fallen over the vale.

"He-e-ey, so_rr_y about that chica," he pokes a sharp finger at my shoulder like a little kid would in an attempt to wake a mother, the self-admitted simile makes me feel worse, "I have a bi_t_ of a tem-per."

He allows a moment of silence. Why he allows it, I cannot say nor can I give it a thought because I can't feel the rest of my fucking body and my head feels like it's about to go kaboom and I've never wanted to just drop dead more than this moment.

Then he rolls me over onto my back and he slides my hands from eyes, moving his head so his face a big scary shadow and I can't see that goddamn Glasgow grin. "Hey there," his hand moves and I flinch away but it comes anyway and gives my cheek a falsely friendly pat, "Come on, up, up, up," he tugs on me arms and forces me to sit up even though my vision swims and I feel sick. "Youuuu pro-ba-bly have a concussion. So…I wouldn't uh want to lay down or uh go to slee_p_ just yet."

He leans in close and I can't swallow that sound, the sound an animal makes when it knows it's going to be eaten. Something happens then. Maybe not divine intervention, but it's something.

A knock comes at the door.

He blinks lazily and looks at the door calculatingly. "_Who could it be now_?" he sing-songs in a terrible parody with that look on his face, in his eyes, that will never allow me to listen to the _Men At Work_'s song without wanting to tear my ears off again.

He jumps up like an excited kid, looks at me and grips the back of my enormous t-shirt. He drags me across the carpet places me in front of the couch, out of sight. "Wait here _quietly_, chica," he smiles and his scars pucker with it, pinching it to a level of deformity that in itself is not terrifying but rather the fact that it enables me to see his teeth. He bares them silently.

He heads down the hall and I hear him turn the water to my shower on. He comes out, skipping a little and humming. I watch, feeling disturbed and scared and sick. The guy is beyond crazy-and-needs-medication, he qualifies for crazy-and-needs-a-muzzle-or-he'll-bite-your-fucking-hand-off.

He turns on his heel and the knock comes again before, "Julie? Ya'll right in there girl?" my next door neighbor. Bishop is a young African-American in his early twenties. He's got a lot of book-smarts and street-smarts, tall and he works out a lot, and is enrolled in the Police Academy. It figures too, because he has all these gang tattoos on his arms and back. Bishop is beautiful in a dark, exotic way, but there's something startling within his features, bright green eyes like a cat's.

"Julie?" his deep voice comes again and he knocks once more.

I hear the door open and I pray to God that I won't hear a switchblade.

"Can I help you?" his voice has changed completely, from crazy-talk with strange pronunciation and putting emphasis on certain letters to almost professional, but polite. It could sound nice on another man. But not him. It doesn't belong to him and he's a fucking liar for fabricating such a lie that makes him sound like a normal, sane man for doing so.

"Yeah, where's Julie? I heard some noises." Bishop's tone is nothing short of hostile and suspicious. He knows I never take guys home with me.

"She's taking a shower right now," the response comes easily, well-timed and he isn't nervous. I want him to give Bishop a reason to beat the ever loving shit out of him.

My head pounds as the beat of my heart grows louder in my ears. I can't talk; my mouth won't work out of either fear or the pain. Conflicting thoughts fight viciously. _Don't do anything Bishop. Bishop knock him out, take him out and help me. Bishop please don't be a hero. Bishop, please save my sorry worthless ass, please, please, please save me_.

"She alright?" he asks. He still doesn't trust him. _Good_. "What were those noises I heard?" he sounds almost aggressive, dancing on that thin line.

"We were moving the bookcase in her bedroom and uh, well some-_things_ fell off," his voice cracks at this interval, like he's about to laugh because he found something terribly funny.

Even though I know he's been in my apartment, it still makes me sick and even more terrified to know that he knows about the bookcase in my room.

Bishop is silent for a long moment.

My world stands still and holds its breath, waiting for a hero or for someone to be safe.

"Alright, but who the hell're you, if you don't mind me asking?" Bishop is getting a little farther away from aggressive.

A pause before, "I'm Jack, an uh old friend of Julia's."

"I'm Bishop, I live across of Julie."

"You know her well?" comes the question and it sounds so friendly, so easy.

_It's all a fucking lie Bishop, get out of here don't let him get you in here, call the police, help me Bishop please save me_. My thoughts are racing and fighting, opposing each other and I feel my body start to shake even more, out of fear for me, and for Bishop.

"Yeah, she's good people even if she is a little caustic." Bishop says conversationally, not yet rid of the suspicious, wary tone but it's draining away.

"Julia? Caustic? Really? I wouldn't have imagined." He replies, getting into the swing of talking like a normal person.

_Of course you wouldn't be able to you fucking cock-sucking son of pig from hell, look what you've done to me_.

My head throbs angrily from my blood pressure being raised and I feel the vertigo again, I slump against the front of the couch and curl into a little ball, pressing my knees uncomfortably against my eyes.

"Yeah, got a sailor's mouth on her," Bishop laughs a little, "And" – he gets cut off. I hear his cell phone ringing. A pause that takes years to end and when it does, I feel dead inside, "I gotta go, anyway, it was nice meetin' ya Jack. Tell Julie I said hi."

I hear Bishop leave. I hear footsteps come tracking back and I look up to see 'Jack' looking down at me. He clicks his tongue. "Younger guys like ya, don't they Ju-li-a," he nods to himself and settles down on my couch, gripping my chin with one strong hand and forcing me to tilt my head back until I can see him. "He liiiikesss you Ju-li-a."

I watch him, feeling numb and I feel tired and scared. My eyes start to close before he jolts me with a slap. "Stay a-wake or you may not wa_k_e up at a_ll_," he warns before he looks over at his coat. "You're doing great, you know. I _like_ it a lot. I saw all the _colors_," he makes a fluttery motion with his other hand, the one not supporting my head. "You have good ta_st_e. That's im-por-tant in a woman."

His words start to slur together to me and I can't see well. I feel sick again. Sicker than when I first saw the Queen of Clubs on my kitchen counter.

His finger starts to tap at my jaw line.

I don't realize that I've closed my eyes again until I get another light slap to the face, "Wakey wakey, no eggs 'n bakey." He giggles a little dementedly.

It confuses and disgusts me so I lift my arm up to push his hand away from my jaw but I don't make it and my arm flops to my lap lifelessly. I stare down at it. Stupid numb arm.

He looks down at my arm as well, then at me. I look away because I don't like him at all right now and he's fucking mean for causing me so much pain for doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing to him.

"Look at me. Hey, hey," I get a light slap, "_Look. At. Me_," the next slap that comes is harsh and makes stars appear behind my eyelids. He forces me to turn my head and he squints down at me. He sucks on the insides of his cheeks and it makes a gross popping, sucking sound like when a foot gets caught in mud before he cocks his head.

"Sta_y_," he gets up and I hear him moving around but I don't bother anymore. I think I may be bleeding to death from the brain. It hurts a lot. My eyes hurt. So do my ears. And my face in general.

He comes back and presses something cold to my head and I gasp loudly. He pushes something small in my mouth and forces me to swallow water that I choke and sputter stupidly on.

He grabs my hand and puts it down on the cold thing which is ice cubes wrapped in a rag as I find out. "Hold it the_r_e for a little _while_," he says it distractedly and I grunt at him, push him away from me as best as I can because being near him makes me violently ill and shows my worst cowardice. He giggles at my attempt before he slaps my arm away.

Every time I close my eyes too long, he slaps me on the cheek, and every time my arm slides down from holding the ice on my head, he puts it back up and slaps my arm. He does a lot of slapping, and I do a lot of not-pushing with a mostly dead arm. Having a concussion makes me numb to my fear, but not to my ill stomach feeling.

He goes through the channels until he comes upon a biography of Caligula on the History channel. He watches and laughs at what I think Caligula would laugh at too; rape, torture, humiliation – the works. I wonder, in a disjointed way, if Caligula isn't still alive, in some strange way. Maybe Buddhism and Shinto had the right idea of reincarnation.

The thought makes my heartstrings tremble ominously.

Thinking about blood makes me feel sick, and thinking about 'Jack' or Caligula makes me sick in so many more ways than one.

I weave in and out of not-dreams. Strange things happen on the edges of my vision, they warp, revert and vibrate so much that they hurt my eyes. The lights flare and dim. The sounds go in and go out in resonating waves.

Nothing makes much sense and 'Jack' talks once in a while; to me or at me, saying more than likely insulting things or starting off more than probable creepy topics that I'm too confused to participate in.

I watch Caligula and compare him to 'Jack' to best of my current comprehensive ability. He was violent, crazy, brilliant and very, very fucked in the head. Sometime, at some point when I'm still a little 'fearless' I ask 'Jack' a question when I can move my mouth properly. "Why'd you gimme the Queen o Clubs?" I don't look at him because I'll be terrified again because slowly, I'm regaining my senses.

"Why? Nnn…the Queen of Clubs is the only one who matches you. She re-pre-sents self-interest and is selfish. Right. Down. To. The. _Marrow_. _Of_. _Her_. _Bones_." He goes on, "Argine," the name rolls off his tongue, "is an an-a-gram for _regina_…do youuu know what regina means?" he doesn't wait for an answer, "It means _queen_. A queen is typically concerned with herself…and with power…money, security…she is, in all, a stereotypical everyday _queen_."

He smiles then, slow and creepy and I see the barest hint of yellow teeth.

It's the last thing I see before my visions fizzes out like a bad television set.

…

…

_Todavía tengo tiempo_: I still have time.

_Usted hace_: You do.

_Una hija perdida_: A lost daughter.


	5. Insects and Angels

**Notes: **

…

…

This chapter, while the not longest, delves more into Julia's background so you can all get a better insight of her; religiously and personally.

And I do realize that despite my long absence (I LOATHE math) that this will be a very, very anti-climatic chapter for many who are here to see JOKER action. Unfortunately, before we go further into that, I need some things understood and clarified with Julia. Therefore, this is a background piece/interlude/plot-without-action chapter.

On further note, the disorganization and rushed pieces of the beginning of this chapter are intended because of Julia's current mindset. Anyway, thank you for all the reviews and I hope you enjoy this!

…

_Insects and Angels_

…

Chop, chop.

It's been a few days since my last encounter with the _lacra_, or as I've come to him, 'Jack.' I had to go to the Emergency Room but I hadn't even needed stitches, no internal hemorrhaging – just nasty bruises and a couple of small cuts. I'm supposed to go back in a week for a follow up.

Chop, chop.

He left the Queen of Clubs behind and the black and red design of a smiley face on the back of my front door.

Sheep's blood to keep the curse out. _Only it welcomes it back the fuck in_.

Chop, chop, slice, slice.

Bishop called earlier today and I realize this was the day of the week we usually ate together. We've done this for a while, more often than not if only to shut out the loneliness of our lives. Since he brought gumbo last time, I tell him I'll bring stew.

Set about the one minded task of chopping vegetables for a large stew for Bishop and me, my mind doesn't really wander. I need this, I think. Some time with Bishop to calm me down because he's got quite the level head and he's calm about these things. He's one of the only people who can stand being around my actual personality for long.

Not polite, strained and a little sugary, but abrasive, caustic, cowardly, wrathful and greedy. I'm no Miss America contestant. I'm not a saint by a long shot. I'm not a particularly good person to be around in general. I'm Julia Hwang – it's as simple as that.

Bishop is one of the few people who don't wear a mask. He is who he is – smart, tolerant, encouraging and rather patient. He's the type of person who makes you feel comfortable and secure in your own skin. He isn't misleading, angry, hateful, spiteful, vicious or brutal.

A small black scorpion flashes through my mind, replaced with a wide Glasgow smile.

The dressing knife slips. My hand starts to bleed.

Thunder roars outside.

I hiss and cradle my bleeding hand close to me, pressing down on the wound before walking to the bathroom to wash it and wrap it in gauze.

I hadn't thought of scorpions in a long time.

I turn the handle to the cold water on the faucet and stick my hand under it, watch the red drain down, chased by water.

I hate scorpions. I hate them more than anything else. More than myself. Black pinchers and an enormous curled tail with a fat, wicked barb used to kill or paralyze. Hateful fucking things.

I think of my ex-proxy from when I'd been a teenager.

A small black scorpion named Jules which had been the pet of Adriana.

Recounting parts of my past including a scorpion, my hand lingers in the middle of my lower abdomen and I grit my teeth.

I ran out once on Adriana, when she had been cutting the brake lines to a teacher's car, I ran out and she'd almost gotten caught. She made sure I never forgot.

Katrina and Rosaleen, our newer friends later on when we turned fourteen, held me down while she poured alcohol down my throat. Beyond the alcohol I could smell heat. Everything was a blur afterwards, but the pain I do remember. Searing hot pain that made me buck and scream and claw and then pass out.

Adriana's laughter in the background. The smell of cooked flesh. The sizzling sound.

She gave me a scorpion too.

My fingers turn into claws and I clutch at my lower abdomen. I want to rip the skin away and rid myself of it like a poison.

I still fucking have that goddamn scorpion.

Bits and pieces of my childhood rush in while I stare as if in a trance at my still bleeding hand, swamped with bad karma that's obviously come back times three. Someone vicious and sadistic and utterly predatory with a singular way of life.

I lean in, brace against the kitchen counter and close my eyes, grit my teeth. Something has broken the memory vault with a sledgehammer. Another demon has come to haunt me and revive the old ways of yesteryear.

Her voice, one I've never forgotten, whispers, murmurs and hisses from the dark place it had been forcibly shoved to, she roars and snarls and beckons. Something sweet dipped in poison. Poisonous honey from the queen bee. Human honeysuckle fed arsenic.

"_You don't smoke?" she asks, watching me carefully, fiddling with the cigarette in her hand. _

_Here, we are ten. We are young. We seem innocent. We are not too young to be corrupt. _

"_No," I reply, looking at the pretty white French tips she gave me earlier. I spread my fingers and I feel sexy. Dangerous. Both. _

_She clicks her tongue at me and takes a drag, "It's relaxing," she coaxes sweetly and it makes me tense. She pauses, cocks her head and smiles slowly, sweetly, charmingly, hideously, "Wanna see something neat?" _

_I look at her warily, "What?" _

_She snatches my jaw with tight, gripping fingers that don't budge even while I try to wriggle away. She takes another drag and kisses me hard. She bites my lips to force my mouth open and when I do, she breathes out into me. She plugs my nose and I instinctively inhale. _

_My eyes roll back and I'm spinning in one place. I fall, collapse and glare at her. _

_She smiles down at me and brushes my hair with her fingers. "Sometimes you can be so pretty." _

_She uses to exposed soft skin of my hip to kill the burning edge of her cigarette. I hiss at the pain and curl up. _

I clutch at the counter and brush my hand over my hip consciously. I grit my teeth and feel cold sweat drip down my back, can feel it collect at my temples, feel the harsh patter of my heart. A severe ache appears behind my left eye and it travels around my cranium.

Vicious life stealing _whore_.

_We're fifteen now. We have other friends, Katrina and Rosaleen who like me, are terrified of and don't trust Adriana. I wonder if everyone who meets Adriana hates her but like me cannot leave her._

_I've got burn scars from Adriana on my hips and lower back, but I also have black and orange nails she painted and a complex bun with chopsticks in it she made for me. _

_We're in a junkyard and we still have our surgical masks on, the way she always do. Adriana and I are wearing our gang signature – a lone dog tooth suspended with wire on a hoop earring in our left ear. _

_Blood drips from her hand, from when she used a straightened paperclip to stab through a boy's hand hand over and over and over again. I'm not crying, not like Rosaleen had and I don't have a disgusted look on my face like Katrina. I've seen worse from Adriana, but I can't help but ask the question because of the boy involved. "Why'd ya do that?" I keep asking like a broken record. I haven't stopped for a while. _

_She isn't smiling when she turns to me. She grips my face, "Why?" she mocks and I flinch back a little from the force behind it. She blinks owlishly at me. "Because I could," she smears the blood on my face like primitive war paint. _

"_Why," I keep asking, "Why, why, why, why." He told me he liked me a few days ago. He said I was pretty. Nobody has ever liked me before. _

_She takes her hands away to reach into her skirt to pull out a cigarette and a lighter. She lights up. She takes a long drag, blowing smoke into my face, she tweaks her nose and she goes on to say, "Living isn't about having the time of your life all the time, or being happy, or being your absolute best for a God that may or may not be there, it's about contrast Jules." _

_I wrinkle my nose at her and I think that she's fucking crazy to think that I'd actually understand her. I don't understand her thinking. I just want to bully people and trick them into giving me money or things I want. I don't want this. _

_She frowns at me when she realizes I don't understand. "Contrast, you know what it means?" I nod hesitantly, unsure where this is going. She gives a brief inclination of her head before continuing, "Contrast between life and death – some people go to hospitals or cancer meeting to watch people around them suffer, so they can sleep at night." _

"_Why?" I blurt out. _

_She smiles, sweet and slow, "Contrast. It's called a vicarious lifestyle, feeding off of another person's feelings or emotions." _

_I frown at her this time, angry and confused. "It just sounds like a fucked lifestyle to me." _

_She snarls and dives close, holding the burning end of her cigarette to my eye, hand gripping my jaw, "You really wanna know what it's about Jules?" I can feel the searing heat of the cigarette and it makes my eye water. I whimper. "It's about watching everyone die around you, for the contrast, it's watching a little five year old girl die from cancer while you're still alive. It's about the little kids in Africa with pesticides and diseases and their starvation while you're here. It's about watching while the whole world dies around you."_

A loud bang makes me jump and hit the counter.

I didn't realize in my musings of all the yesterdays how loud my heart is. Like a war drum beat, loud and constant in its rhythm. I gasp and clutch at my sides and fall to the ground. The light bulbs fizz before everything goes dark.

I can still feel my hand bleeding, in the dark, without lights or sounds but the rain and the thunder and the flashes of lightning, I sit here, desolate and numb.

Isn't it enough? Why the fuck do I have to suffer through both of them? Adriana and this, this fucking psycho clown from hell – why do these people find me? How do they find me? Do I give off a psycho-finder beacon or something? What the fuck did I ever do to actually deserve this sort of torment twice in my lifetime?

I pull my knees up and hunch over them. I press them against my eyes tightly and I wrap my arms around my legs. I can feel the slick, warm blood from my hand smear on them.

_Adriana, Adriana, Adriana, Adriana_, my mind obsesses over the way this word unrolls from my mouth. I still can't spit her name out hatefully.

She was fond of burning things, a pyromaniac of sorts. Burning me with cigarette ends, or that fucking scorpion brand – she was relentless in a way that makes me tremble in fear.

Adriana burning me with the homemade scorpion brand before brushing my hair and doing my nails. Smiling that goddamn smile, small and sweet and tender like she wasn't so fucking evil.

'Jack' ramming me against the walls of my own home, before making sure I stayed awake, gave me pain killers and water. Laughing and watching the History Channel like he wasn't evil.

I try to remember to breathe.

I hiccup sobs and lightning flashes blindingly white, spots flicker across my vision and I can't help but start to cry. Hot tears of shame, frustration and fright wash over me. The lightning that has become more consistent in the background is strangely comforting. The light from Gabriel's lantern. God's candle in the sky.

I fold my fingers into each other and begin to pray through my sobs. I don't want to keep paying for my past crimes. I don't want any more stones thrown at the treacherous bitch. I don't want to try to for any kind of redemption. I never killed anyone, but murderers got to ask for forgiveness and they were fucking _handed_ it.

Why don't I get that?

What the fuck did I do or not do in a past life for this? What did I do or not do in this current life?

Blood smattered money and a frightened, sweaty man occur in my thoughts, a young boy with blue, blue eyes who tells me "I like you," when I'm fifteen with a hole in his hand follows.

I let out a loud, keening sound like a stuck pig. I keep rocking back and forth, and praying and sobbing in the dark.

I try to remember to breathe.

Time passes in a tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock motion that is neither soothing nor comforting.

The lights buzz back on and when they do, I force myself up to wrap my hand carefully.

I use medical tape to secure the gauze but I jump when my phone rings. I peek my head out of the bathroom door to stare at it.

It rings again.

And again.

_And again_.

Shaking in my boxers and t-shirt I walk to the phone and put my hand over it, trembling. The first thoughts I have of this, is that either it's 'Jack' or Adriana. I pick it up and breathe, "Hello?" it comes out shaky and it hitches because I'd cried so much.

"_Baby girl? That you?"_ Bishop's voice comes in; strong and natural like cedar.

"Yeah, it's me," I swallow and try to moisten my mouth so that I can talk properly.

"…_You been cryin' Jules?_" he asks, gentle and I feel that sudden surge of warm affection for him. I wish I had a big brother, and that that brother would've been like Bishop.

I swallow again, "Yeah, I was watching _The Fox and The Hound_." It's one of my favorites, but I have to watch it in private because the water works always turn on.

I hear a sigh on the other end, "_Baby girl, you're sad enough without that damn Disney flick."_ He sounds mildly amused, partially scolding. "_Anyway, I called to tell ya I can't make it for dinner. One of the guys called in sick last minute so I gotta stay_."

My heart drops to my stomach and boils in my acids. "Oh, alright, it's cool so long as you called."

"_Sorry_," he apologizes again.

"S'alright," _you son of a bitch! Don't you know I need this?! Don't you even fucking care or think about me once in a goddamn while?! Don't you see that I'm fucking falling apart at the goddamn seams? Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?_ "Anyway, we can reschedule?" I keep the disappointment out of my voice and it works.

"_Yup, how 'bout Friday?_" he sounds a little more upbeat.

I fake a smile on my end, "Sure thing."

"_Alright baby girl. I'm sorry, and try to get some rest a'right? Them bags don't look too hot_." He sounds teasing and it works. A little.

"'Kay. See you tomorrow."

"_Night baby girl_."

I hang up and lean over the counter corner.

Rage fills me up and I rip the phone out of its plug and throw it forcefully to the other side of the room. The phone bounces off the wall with a loud sound.

I slam my hands down on the counter and I feel the familiar loneliness and hopelessness fill me again, drowning out the hot rage with cold hollowness.

I look out my window and force the tears back. I sneer and make a decision.

It's dark out already so I get dressed in a one shoulder black dress, put on a fleece-cotton homemade overcoat colored motley of purples and browns and greens without a distinct pattern. I grab my purse and keys and lock the door behind me.

A couple blocks down, there's a basement bar that serves the best fresh nachos and apple pie. I head in that direction and look about me for any suspicious company I may bait. The wind and rain tears at my clothes and hair but I don't care. Thunder booms distantly and lightning flahes. People are scurrying about trying to get out of the nasty weather. My manteau flutters in the wind. Even without an umbrella or raincoat, I continue to strive in the direction of the bar.

I haven't done this in a while; go to a bar with the intention of a one night stand that I can leave in the middle of the night.

My legs are jittery from earlier adrenaline rush of flashbacks I'm not happy to uncover. The _lacra_ is costing me what sanity I've retained after Adriana. For this, I hate him more than her. A sharp wind blows coldly behind me and I shudder, burying myself further into my coat.

My life doesn't make sense anymore.

I hated it when it was methodical, mechanical and systematic but I miss that now. I miss not having to turn my head every few minutes to make sure I'm not being followed or targeted. I miss sleeping a good six or seven hours if allowed that. I miss my life.

I shove the thought away when I enter _Mike's Short Stop_.

The bar smells like it always does – like apple pie, nachos and some odd combination of beer or margaritas. There are a few people in here; a woman with her boyfriend presumably in a corner sharing a screwdriver and talking in low voices. A lone woman, a blonde with brown sable eyes and a black dress nurses a single tear and a dry martini.

I spot him.

He's got incredibly platinum blonde hair and a frown on his face. His skin is a little whiter than mine, but his blue eyes complement it. He looks like he's made of stone and white earth. He stares glumly at the shot glass in his hand. I take a good, long look at him. Lean muscle, covered in good looking skin and he's got no facial hair. He looks the type who keeps himself clean.

He's wearing a dark blue business suit without a tie, his slacks are clean and pressed and I feel myself slump a little. He's out of my league, but I don't have a problem trying to reach higher than my height to get a book I want off a shelf.

I walk to sit down two stools from him and I ask Mike, the bartender, to get me a hot buttered rum and a slice of apple pie. Mike smirks when he looks over at the blue chump sitting two down from me and nods before wandering off to the back. I hold my scoff. Of course Mike knows. Of course.

The only people who know you; actually know you are three people: your best friend, your psychiatrist and your bartender.

I wait and I can smell that fresh apple pie. My stomach grumbles.

I shift uneasily into the seat and I think of how to approach this guy.

When Mike comes in with a big steaming mug, I thank him for it and he raises his eyebrows at me before shooting a look at Blue Eyes. I glare back and mouth at him that I'm waiting. Mike rolls his eyes before jerking his head to the guy. I hiss at him.

He sighs, rolls his eyes again and wanders off to talk with the lone woman with the dry martini. She welcomes his presence because she starts talking to him after a bit. He shoots me a look over his shoulder meaningfully.

I glare, but move down a stool.

My drink is warm under my fingers and I clear my throat. Blue Eyes looks over at me and I see the utter sorrow in them, the sleepless bags under his eyes and for some reason, I feel my heart ache. I don't why but the wire around my heart winds tighter until I can barely breathe. I realize I keep staring before I force myself to say something. "What's got you so glum?"

He exhales loudly through his nose. "Is that any of your business?" despite the words he uses, they don't sound cold or bitter or malicious. His voice has a certain timbre in it, soft and tender beneath the wooden exterior. It makes him endearing.

I shrug and take a sip of my drink. "No, just thought I'd ask since you look so miserable."

He takes another look at me. "You don't look that great yourself."

I flinch in surprise. Usually I'm pretty good at keeping a mildly happy poker face. No one sees through it unless they care to actually look. Strangers and even people who know me don't look that deep. I've gotten good at acting ever since A.A (After Adriana).

I take another drink and realize that he didn't say that to stop my advances because he's still looking at me, but for some other reason. I can't place it.

He watches me with those blue, blue eyes. They aren't pale blue, but rather a darker blue. They look like the oceans on Earth on pictures taken from space.

I shrug nonchalantly again, "It's Gotham. I don't think that with the way things are going, I would want to meet a happy somebody." I think of the _lacra_ for only a moment before I distance myself from that.

He smiles a little, a little tug at the corner of his lips and I feel like just watching him all night. He nods and downs the last of his drink. "I can agree with that." Mike comes over and refills his shot glass. Whiskey. A dying man's sad lullaby.

"But sometimes, it can be really beautiful," he sounds wistful when he says this. "And that's what makes it hurt."

I watch him and I don't say anything. I have no idea what's got him drinking whiskey, looking so piteous, so broken and beautiful. An angel without wings.

"It's okay, everything'll turn out," my fingers curl near his and I try to make my voice just as soft and smooth as his is. I have no idea who I'm trying to reassure.

He downs another shot and I don't know if he heard me or just ignores it. He looks back at me and for a moment I'm caught between fright and adoration. He's so beautiful, the way his soft hair looks so weightless and covers a part of his eye in a wispy way that looks like feathers. I think maybe with those eyes, gentle and piercing and angelic, that he can see right through me. Can see who I really am, what I'm after and at the little burns scars on my body.

I take another drink from my drink and look away. I look bashful, the way I do it, but it isn't that. It's the fear of being known. I wonder, for a crazy second, if he can see my scars. I pray to God he can't.

"_Qui vous a fait mal si mal?_" he questions me and I feel warm to my toes. All I know is that it's French, but I can't understand French. It sounds gorgeous and heartbreaking, with the way he says it. He reaches up when I don't respond and touches my cheek with the backs of his knuckles and I flinch away.

I don't know what he said, and I don't know the look in his eyes. He doesn't _want me_ want me. the realization of what the look is kicks in a moment later.

It's the way someone will look at an emaciated animal. The way someone looks down at a gravestone. The way someone looks after a particularly sad movie. I barely recognize it. His blue, blue eyes won't stop looking and piercing and I feel my heart about to burst and I feel so scared and hurt. I don't understand what's happening.

I hear a disembodied whimper and my face feels hot and wet.

His hand, warm and careful goes behind my head and pulls me to the cook of his neck, and he speaks again. I hear and feel it. "_C'est pas mal, sec vos yeux. Silence maintenant_." His fingers go through my hair and he shushes me a little.

I realize I'm crying on him. I haven't cried in front of anyone before, not even Bishop. Blue Eyes keeps murmuring to me in French and I know why. It's his first language; his native tongue. When you speak in your first language, it's from the heart and it reveals your sincerity. I know.

He's sincere. He's comforting me. He knew what I've actually needed. He knew what I didn't.

I've never cried in front of anyone before, and for some reason it feels nice.

I wrap my arms around him and cry harder, forcing it all out and he doesn't seem to care that I'm getting saliva and mucus and tears all over his nice business suit. He keeps combing my hair a little, hushing me in French and whispering other things I don't bother to listen to.

The bar is suddenly quiet.

Through my tears, I see Mike patting the arm of the blonde girl who sees me looking through her tears. Her mascara runs and I see it.

The hopelessness and loneliness.

She sees it in me too I think, because for a moment, a moment in time where nothing matters but the hurt in everyone, we are friends.

When I finish my rum and eat my cold slice of apple pie, I slide the money to Mike who gives me a small smile, and I get up to go when I pause and turn to look at Blue Eyes. "What's your name?" I ask.

He looks up at me with blue, blue eyes. He smiles and it breaks my heart but makes me feel happier. "Gabriel," he says, "What's yours?" he asks back.

My throat doesn't work for a second. "What-what was your name?"

"Gabriel," he repeats calmly.

"I'm Juliana." It's the first time in a long time that I've given my full name. It's on the growing list of the things I've done in a while.

He raises his whiskey glass to me before he downs it. "Well met," he gets up and turns to leave, "I've got to go, unfortunately," he grimaces when he looks at his watch. He looks up at me and smiles again, "Get home safely and try to stay in the light." He bids me good bye and I stand there stupidly.

Gabriel. He says his name is Gabriel. He told me to stay in the light. He didn't take advantage of me. He held me. He's breaking my heart.

I feel like running after him and tearing his shirt off to check for wings.

I swallow. His name is Gabriel. I almost collapse to my knees on the floor.

I run after him and throw the doors to the bar open, climbing the stairs despite my heels and I look for him in the dark, squinting. There is no sign of him. I look in the sky. I stare up at it, where the moon is bright and the stars wink weakly.

The thunder is gone, now and so is the lightning but the rain's still here. It's a light sprinkle that feels cool and refreshing. I put my hands on my face and breathe in. The weight on my chest isn't crushing me anymore.

I can breathe.

I walk slowly, welcoming the rain and going in the direction of my home, but I walk a little further than that.

Gargoyles perched on the roof corners of the small Catholic Church look dark and wicked, but they are God's creatures. They protect those in it and out of it. The little gate is unlocked and I push it open, walking on the cobblestone pathway to the doors.

The doors open easily and I stand in the doorway. I reach down and I take my heels off before I enter the church. With the hand that isn't holding my heels, I dip my fingers in the holy water and cross myself. I walk down the carpet barefoot and I'm dripping water behind me. The scent of candles and incense are light.

An old hunched over woman is kneeling and praying, wrinkled face set in concentration. I don't bother her but I look up at the wretched, down set face of Jesus Christ.

I don't look at the stained glass window depicting Gabriel. I've finally seen Gabriel with my own eyes. I saw what he looked like and how beautiful he is.

I go to the rows of candles and light a match. I light one for my mother, for Ms. Ming, Sadie, Bishop and Gabriel.

I kneel down in a pew across of the old woman who looks up at me momentarily in her praying to give me a wobbly, wrinkly smile. I see she's been crying too. She pats the space next to her and I get up and move.

I kneel next to her and she gives me a companionable nod before returning to her praying. I weave me fingers together and bend my head. I pray to God to forgive me and to Gabriel to thank him for saving me and keeping me in the light of his lantern.

I beg forgiveness for doubting either of them.

I smile amidst my prayers and it feels real.

He said his name was Gabriel.

…

…

For idea of what Julia's overcoat looks like check out Danielle Nault's scrapbook.

(French) _Qui vous a fait mal si mal?_ : Who hurt you so badly?

(French) _C'est pas mal, sec vos yeux_. : It's okay, dry your eyes.

(French) _Silence maintenant_ : Hush now


	6. Just needs a little love

**Notes: **

O.O I was NOT expecting such a warm reaction to the last chapter, and I can only hope that this one meets the criteria. Fortunately, I'm on Winter Break! Huzzah! However, this chapter was giving me loads of problems and I suspect that next one will be no better so it may be a little while before I update, again. From here on out, the chapters will be picking up some speed. Hopefully. Or I'll have to shoot myself.

Out of pure curiosity, how do you all view Julia, physically? I view her as one way, a little vague, but I was just curious as to what your impressions of what she may look like be.

**Weird Fishes**, I'm very happy that you like Julia's ethnicity as it does kind of show more of this city aspect. I'm also very happy that you like the different languages I've incorporated. :)

**Apheliongirl**, I'm very happy you're enjoying the story as well, and the Spanish bits that have been added. :)

Btw, if you DO NOT want me to reply, just say _don't reply_. I will not take offense and I admit that I can be VERY obnoxious when I reply. XD

…

…

_Just needs a little love_

…

…

Trousers: check – neat stitches that I don't have to pluck out with good, hardy thick purple thread. Any idea how fucking hard it is to find good thread like that in purple and not in black? Pretty fucking hard. Believe me.

Vest with strange hexagon patterns: finished – complete with a good collar that isn't stiff.

Gentleman's coat: done, tails even with proper shoulders and good arm lengths to allow for cuffs should he want to wear them, along with his customized inside pockets with trick cloth flaps and button snaps; thirteen on the left side and eleven on the right.

Leather gloves: no. I'm so close to having this ludicrous outfit done that I can almost feel a new apartment surrounding me.

It's amazing what one can accomplish with no sleep and the overhanging threat of death in a week and a half.

I'm stitching the fingers of the glove by hand. I hadn't needed to on some of the larger parts of the gentleman's coat, trousers and vest but the gloves need it. Leather is a bitch to pluck out – and this goddamn leather is genuine and fucking purple.

Fucking _purple_.

My reading glasses are perched on my nose and I'm squinting with a lamp burning over my shoulder.

Ever since my encounter with Gabriel at the bar when I let loose the floodgates I needed to, when I saw the blonde woman and made a brief connection. It had been needed at the time, misery loves company as it were, because with shared misery comes empathy. Now, it's beautiful. Like a painting of still-life.

It was one of the few moments in life that make me feel affection for those surrounding me, sharing the beauty.

Three days have passed since then. I've been in and out of work smiling. Ms. Ming, the day I came in, felt at my face with cold bony hands and smiled at me. "Your chi is balancing out, I can feel happy springs," she said, pointing at my chest. "Feel good, alive in here," she'd said, grabbing at my shirt with a strong hand. "Heart strong and good, happy."

"Who did YOU over the weekend?" Sadie had asked with a sly smile.

I'd been too doped up on something part relief, part awe and part giddiness to care to answer seriously. It's called being happy. Huh.

My Gabriel pendent which had been on my keys now is on a thin gold chain around my neck. He hangs there, piteous eyes cast to those around him; part sympathy and compassion, part disappointment and resignation. He will forgive, if you deserve to be forgiven.

He is a soft, warm comfort that hangs around my throat, my guardian and friend and confident.

I pause in my stitching to rub my thumb over him.

This doesn't mean that I believe that 'Jack' will not come back, or that I am not afraid of him, or that I believe that Gabriel or God will undoubtedly save me from whatever my fate may be, but I know this much: There may be a chance that I have not been abandoned for the past transgressions that I must still redeem myself for. I am not beyond redemption.

"…Another mutilated body has been recovered near King Avenue," the news anchor for Gotham City News interrupts my thoughts. I barely withhold a snort. Not surprising; King Avenue has all the junkies and die hards out there. I screw my face up; I need to stop watching the news. "The man was identified to be a one Philip Enrique who worked at the Gotham City Bank. His throat had been cut methodically, and like four other victims before him, he similarly has a smile cut into his face; a Glasgow smile." The television anchorwoman says this all in the general monotone tone of all news anchors.

"Police have not released any concrete information, but it is suspected to be possibly mafia related…"

I stop my stitching to look at the TV. My heart beats slowly in dread.

"The content you are about to see is disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised." A photograph of the man's face, he's Puerto Rican if I guess right, flashes. His eyes are closed, but his mouth remains forcibly smiling. A red Cheshire cat grin remains fixated on his face as if from the X-rated version of _Alice in Wonderland_.

_Are they even fucking allowed to show this shit? _

I think of 'Jack', the _lacra_ who cut up that poor damn fat man I couldn't be bothered to help; which ironically led to my own downfall. I stare at the TV like a zombie while the cogs and gears work. I think _He's a psycho_. I think _He won't stop unless someone stops him_. I think _I let the dog run without a leash._ I think _He'll want to watch while the whole world dies_.

The newswoman continues to speak but I'm already tuning her out.

For some reason, my hand unconsciously curls and clutches at my lower abdomen, where I can still feel the shadow of heat and pain from the scorpion. The proof of Adriana's reign of terror. Looking at the grotesque smile, I wonder if I'll get another mark as proof of another reign of horrors.

A knock that comes at the door startles me and I jump, inhaling noisily and I shoot a suspicious look at the door.

The backside of it still has red and black smears from smiley face from hell that I had attempted to clean off. It won't come off completely. I need to go to hardware store and paint over it – to at least hide it so I can leave with my deposit.

"Who is it!?" I yell. I sound like the grumpy old bitch no one should wake up. I expect the deep, exuberant and resonant voice of Bishop coming in to talk and chat and cook for me. My heart stops momentarily when I remember Bishop is on the graveyard shift all week.

Instead of a voice, I receive only a singular, lonely knock that echoes through my apartment eerily, through my mind and even seems to drown out the TV.

I swallow and stand. I place the needle and the glove on my coffee table near my cold cup of chai milk tea. "Who is it?" my voice isn't a demand anymore, rather a plea.

A lone knock comes again and with a small pause, another knock follows it.

I go quiet and watch my door. I lay my hand on the back of my couch, staring and staring and praying and wishing and hoping. My other hand wraps around Gabriel and squeezes.

More knocks, faster in their pace and more in numbers and still, I wait in silence. I measure my breaths, my heartbeats and my thoughts.

There is an odd sound that comes, a clicking rattle and my ears perk. I take my glasses off and I fold them on the coffee table before I turn my full attention to me door.

Then it comes.

In all my dread and fear and horror wrapped up – it comes personified as this sound.

A door being unlocked.

I inhale and leap over the couch like a doe running for her life which I may very well be and I reach the door before it manages to swing all the way open. What do I do? Slam the door closed on fingers that will crush and twist and kill me? Attempt to keep him at bay for a few seconds?

In my nature, I do not think.

I act.

Impulsively so.

I slam the door closed but his fingers, nails unevenly clipped and jagged like he bites them turn and catch the door's edge, forcing it to remain only open by a crack.

I hear a hiss of air, him inhaling like a dog that smells fresh meat or fear.

I feel him lean his weight against the door, "Little _chi-ca_ let me in. _Let. Me. In_."

I shudder, shake and put my back against the door while my other hand's fingers attempt to pry his fingers from the door's edge. I'm shaking my head, _No, no, no, no, no, no, never again, go away and never come back_.

He catches my index and middle finger to hold them tightly. I can feel the griminess of what I remember as dried blood. I feel like retching, or slitting my own throat for not thinking. _Tonta_.

"No-t by the uh _shi-ne_ of your prrrretty little _eye_-balls you say? Well uh, then I'll huff and I'll puff and I. Will. _Blllloooowww_ you away."

The whimper of subservience and a plea of forgiveness bubbles from my throat at his version of the wolf and me, in my costume of the pig. I think of how he changed the words and I feel my fear coil up and rise like smoke.

I'm mouthing words in Spanish. _Perdóneme perdón, y por favor, por favor no me dolió._ I catch myself before I say them aloud.

_He doesn't like Spanish, mala Julia, mala, tonta, speak English, now, now, _now. "I, I'm almost done. C-come back t-t-tomorrow." I try to pull my fingers back but he holds on and he leans in closer to the crack of the door to speak.

"Is tha-t sooo chi-ca? Wellll I tell ya what. How's about _you_ let _me_ in and I won't take away your uh _shi-ne_." He squeezes my fingers once, hard and twists them between his fingers before he abruptly lets go. I feel him lean away from the door.

I step away from the door slowly, on trembling legs and step back from him. The door swings open slowly.

He stands there, dirty blonde hair in tangled curls and hazel eyes dark with brutal violence. His hunched over posture hasn't changed, and he lurches in like a hyena, a predator and his shoulders even roll to complete the role he so epitomizes.

His eyes are on me and I flatten myself to the wall and shuffle away from him. I want the wall to eat me.

He looks over at the vest, coat and trousers and he grins. His scars pucker and pull almost painfully. "Oh me oh my. I doooo declare," he says in a pseudo Southern woman accent. "This, chi-ca, is hard work. So uh _vibrant_ and _colorful_," his wiggles his fingers in the air and he skips to his clothing. "Like me! Wouldn't you sa-_y_?" he drawls to me.

I nod vigorously in agreement.

Colorful as a fucking rainbow.

"And all you've got left is the uh gloves, which by the way look _mah_-vellous," he flicks his hand. He turns to me. "Are you uh making din-ner?" I twitch and look at my empty, clean stove. His look turns mock-serious and he puts his hands on his hips. "Lucy, why I gotta tell you 'bout this?"

I stare wide eyed. _No fucking way_, a distant, bitter and angry part of me snarly, _I am playing Susie-fucking-homemaker for your creepy ass_. Most of the current me grovels and flinches away. _Okay, I feed you, you get the fuck out? Okay? Okay? Right? Right?_

I clear my throat and keep a good distance between us, and I'm closer to the door. I feel okay about a quick sprint if needed. By looking at his body – skinny-lean but from past experience that's deceiving considering he can just fucking _lift and throw_ me, then he could probably catch up to me easily. He probably will outrun me if I make a break for it so I just settle for being not too close.

He stares at me with his head cocked and he drops his hands from his hips. Waiting for a reaction. I lick my lips and force my voice to work. "What uh, what, what do you want?" I ask, then add quickly in case he takes offense, "For dinner. For dinner. What do you want for dinner?"

He rocks back and forth on his heels and his eyes roll up to the ceiling and I think of how a shark's eyes will roll back before they take a chunk out of something.

"Something good," he says, raising his brows at me and I stare back with confusion in my face. He grins. "An-_d_, it better uh be _good_, chi-ca." He settles himself down on a dinner table chair and watches me with his hands folded.

My hands tremble. My knees shake. I think, I think of what he may want to eat and I have to force these thoughts down like a foul taste. I remember the steak in the marinade in the fridge. I go to it mechanically and try to block him out, while I grab the fixings for fajitas. The steak had been marinating since this afternoon, so at least it's ready to grill.

Green bell peppers, a brown onion and tomatoes – the vegetables for the dish, and the old tortillas from yesterday that I'd made for breakfast.

It sounds stupid, but I feel a little safer in the kitchen, with him waiting at the dinner table.

_La cocina es la fortaleza de mujer, Julia_.

Advice passed down from generations of abused women, torn women comes in handy at that moment so I won't fuck up and cut myself again.

"You like to watch the news a lot?" a voice asks, no sign of pauses or emphasis on certain words or parts of them, and the tone is conversational. I'm already overloaded from being this close to him, what the hell makes him think I'm up for a decent conversation? "Hey, _hey_," his voice gets a gritty edge. "_Hey_, chi-ca, I asked you a _quest_ion."

I swallow nervously and hold the onion firmly while the dressing knife trembles in my suddenly weak hand. The light that glints off of it makes me think it's smiling up at me, waiting for me to slip so it can get to bite me again.

"Y-yeah," I admit it; I do like to watch the news. It's depressing though because all it has is the bad shit that goes on in this sewage strewn city. I cut into the onion and start preparing it while the iron pan heats up. I don't look at him. _Don't look his way or he'll go for your throat and rip it out_. I catch him out of the corner of my eye, his lips are pursed and his scars pucker up, but his eyes follow the knife.

I withhold the shudder.

"Wh_y_?" he questions and there's some sort of sharpened edge to it that makes me tense while I'm dicing the rest of the tomatoes and bell peppers.

"I-I just, just do." I say, hopeful that he'll stop talking. The steak, already cut into strips goes in first to the pan and I'll throw the vegetables in when it's browned. I fiddle in agitation with the kitchen towel on the counter after I wash my hands from touching the raw meat. I prod at the sizzling meat with a wooden spoon.

"Do you ah _know_ _why_ that is, chica?" he jabs, twisting and then he pauses for a long moment that makes me look over my shoulder to eye him warily.

He grins, "Be-cause you just _can't get enough_ of it. The fact that there are people so much worse off than you. You have to wat-ch them _bu-rn_ in their own lives, watch them _suffer_."

_Vicarious fucking life stealing whore. _

I freeze and stare at him dumbstruck. No. That isn't true. I'm not like that. The scent of the steak slices cooking don't penetrate through my self-absorbance. No. That isn't why. It's because there are things I need to know, know if there are rapists or murderers or thieves around or something, I don't watch it because of that. I don't.

He licks his lips and now the grin seems to be ubiquitous, "Felt in-di-rectly, _vicarious_. But you don't like it up close, you like to um watch it from _faaaaar away_ don't you chica?"

My heart wails like a banshee in denial.

He raises his eyebrows at me, "Care-_ful_ or you'll uh burn dinner."

I shake myself from the trance he placed me in and I add the onion, then the tomatoes and bell peppers.

I reach across the counter where in a foam dish are the tortillas I made for yesterday night's dinner.

The tortillas I only have to heat up on the stove directly, flipping them with my fingers numbly. The gas stove is best used.

I grab the sour cream from the fridge. The fajitas stay on the cast iron pan and I only need to move it to the tile and wood center piece set on my table.

Steam rises and the uncomfortable sound of sizzling makes my hand brush over my lower abdomen.

I catch his curious glance at my unconscious action.

I back away to the other side of the table; further from him and I set down the cutlery and plates.

I sit down and watch him watch me. It takes all the gut strength I've got to not run away screaming. I swallow heavily, reach for a tortilla and start plating grilled meat slices and vegetable dices on my plate. I roll them up in a tortilla without beans or cheese because I'm not really much of a fan of either in this meal.

I bite and chew.

He smiles darkly and starts eating.

I don't have much of an appetite. I put it down when I've finished only half of my burrito. I push the plate away and hold the back of my hand to my mouth. If I eat anymore, I'll be sick.

He keeps eating, ripping through the soft tortillas, and the beef. He favors the onion slices and tomato dices more than the bell peppers.

"I've uh got to sa-y chi-ca, you do make a very uh go-_od_ dinn_er_," he bats his eyes at me. "Marry me would ya?" he cackles at his own joke but I remain untouched. I know what he's doing. I realized it when he said he wanted something to eat.

Adriana would pull similar stunts. Tell me to shampoo her hair or do her makeup for a sort of control measure. See how long the control would last. See what control she would have over me. Strange, out of place demands that would end up being some twisted form of observational entertainment.

I clear my throat. "Why," I start but stop, and I try to start again, "Why are you here?" I whisper and it sounds so fucking beneath the usual tone and temper I've got but I know what I'm dealing with. The male version of Adriana, but much, much more terrifying.

He chews, swallows and his face closes off completely.

I get goose bumps from the tension that suddenly crackles in the room like electricity. I've unknowingly entered dangerous territory. Suddenly, I'm thirteen or fourteen and I've said something stupid, and I expect my ear to get boxed or another cigarette circle to accompany the others.

"You uh want to know why exactly I'd decided to pay you a uh friendly visit?" he cocks his head abruptly and stands slowly from his place. I stand as well, slowly. I bend my knees and back so I can sprint immediately if needed. I wonder if it'll help is I've got a head start. "Can't I just pay my ah _tai-lor_ a little visit or am I _im-pos-ing_?"

I shake my head negatively_. Of course not. All of my _bestest_ friends are all straight from hell_.

"Good. Goo-d, now then. The uh thing with the do-or kind of sets me off a little, just a teensy weensy bit," he indicates with his thumb and index finger. "See, I thought, that um we were very, verrrrry good friends and good _friends_ don't try to keep the other out of their ah homes, do they?" he tsk's me, waggling his finger like I'm a naughty child. "The nex-t time you do something like that, I will take that shi-ne _away_.

"Now. Now. Now then, I uh happen to like that," he waves his fingers at me, walking around the dining table. "_Sparkle_ in your eyes. I wonder though…who might have put such a prrreettyyyy sparkle there? Was it because you were _special_, Ju-li-a?" my name rolls off his tongue and I shiver in disgust at the way it sounds.

I grit my teeth at the notion that he has very good observational skills and may know more about me than I know. I don't want him to know about Adriana. Or my scars. Or me in general.

He walks around the table, tapping his fingers on the top. "Did some-one _love_ you enough to give you your own little _sparkle_? Was i-t cuuul-ti-vated? B-red? To get i-t to uh shine so prettily," his fingers wiggle playfully in the air, "They must have loved it _well_," he gets closer and I vaguely realize that he's backing me against the wall; boxing me in, "And goo-_d_."

I push the taste of bile down. I try to force the image of a beautiful girl, with long coal black curls and almond shaped blue eyes, away. I ignore the sudden hot flash across my abdomen; where the scorpion stings me.

He doesn't actually know. He doesn't, I know he doesn't. How could he possibly know? Does he know about my other fears? How I feared becoming my mother? The reason I could never leave Adriana? Does he know? Of course not. No. He _doesn't_ know anything goddamnit.

I stand in front of him, curling away from him in worn hiking shorts and a rather loose green shirt, without any protection. He stands over me, fierce and dangerous in street clothes.

He licks his lips and it pulls at his scars. "No-w I won_der_ who was it that uh loved it _so_, Ju-li-a?" he leans down and grabs my jaw, holding and presses his forehead against mine with some pressure behind it. "Who. Loved. You. _So_. _Much_, chi-ca?"

And then he grins.

It's slow and horrendous but like a car accident. I can't bear to look away. His scars pucker and exaggerate his smile freakishly, pulling and pushing at the same time. His eyes, dark hazel, gleam with something so unholy that I grab at Gabriel.

His eyes begin a slow trek down, to Gabriel. If he had been any other man, I would've known he was probably looking at my breasts. But not this one. Never this one.

"Gabriel, God's archangel and uh, yours too." It isn't a question. He looks back up at me. "When I asked, be-_fore_, if you were _praying_," I recognize it as when I had to take his measurements, "Were you praying to the Big Ka_huna_ or uh this gu_y_?" he cocks his head and taps the side of my jaw.

"G-Gabriel," I manage to say. I'm afraid I'm about to piss my pants. It's getting harder to breathe. My heart is clawing up at my esophagus.

_Entrégueme de esta mal. _

"Is it because of his _golden_ curls or his p-i-tifulll eyes or…per-haps his lantern appeals to your uh na-ture?" he licks his lips again and the sound, the sucking sloshing sound is awful. He does this thoughtfully. "Is he your ah night-light?"

He cackles at the thought.

I flinch at how he demeans him_. Cocky son of bitch. Someone should put the fear of God in your ass_.

His eyes roll and he pulls back from me, I can breathe in and it doesn't smell like the streets, blood or other pollutions. Then his eyes flick to the clothes. "You'll be done to-morr-ow, right?" I nod. He smiles, giggles, "Goody, cause it. Will. Be. So. Much _fun_ once this is all over with. You'll thank me, chi-ca, because there are just _so_ _many_ ah sur-pris-es!"

His curly hair long since greased up and tangled bobs when he bends over to laugh and hoot and cackle.

They would have been cherubic curls if he could be bothered with hygiene.

_Mire cómo ellos botan._

He slowly recovers himself, and he just grins at me, before he cocks his head in thought, "So. Who love-_d_ you, chi-ca?" he leans in close to eyeball me, and whatever the fuck he thinks he sees.

He's crowding in close now, and I can feel my lips starting to pull back in a dog's snarl. Along with my frightened self, there will always be that stupid, dumb bitch inside. The stupid dumb pitbull bitch who will go for a throat if need be, no matter how high up it is. She had, after all, been the favorite pet of Adriana so she really doesn't know better.

He licks his lips. "Are you uh trying to _smile_ at me chica?"

I feel my heart hammer against my ribcage. I feel the need to bite and hold on until he's dead or I'm dead. The stupid, dumb bitch Adriana trained is showing her ugly face; panting and ready to do the needed work for approval from anyone, for a pat on the head or some nice, pretty words.

His eyes roll and he rocks on his heels, "Do you uh want to know where I got these scars, chica?"

I stiffen and flatten myself against the wall. The pitbull retreats with a whine at the sudden feel of danger in the air and suddenly I don't have any kind of edge.

"It's a vu-eryyyy in-ter-est-ing story, you know chica. But, I'm a-fraid that I'll bore you with mine since, yours seem so much more _interesting_, much," his eyes roll in his head like he doesn't know where to look and he giggles, "_Stranger_."

I freeze and my heart stops. What?

_What_?

_What_?!

I swallow nervously and start to inch to the door. "A-ta-ta, no leaving with-out the um proper explanation," he waggles his finger in chastisement.

_He's lying, he's playing some sick fucking mind game with you, don't show anything, he's a goddamn liar so just shut him out. He's doing this for kicks. He wants to mind fuck you, don't look at the scorpion, don't touch it and ignore the fucking sting. _

_Oh Jesus Christ, he knows, he knows, he knows. Why? How? Oh my God_.

"No?" he asks and he sucks on the inside of his cheeks. He regards me with narrow eyes, half lidded, "Your uh parents ever do anything in-appropriate?" I don't answer, and keep my eyes on the door. "Hey, _hey_, I'm talk-ing _to_ you," I don't look. I don't look because I'm shutting down. System failure, malfunction; automatic power down.

How could he know?

"Hey, loo-_k_ at me when _I'm talk-ing to you_," he snarls viciously and his hand shoots forward to grip my jaw brutally, forcing me against the wall while he invades my privacy. I barely notice the throb.

He turns my head and forces me to look at him. "Ya know," his eyes are dark and wild and with dread, I come to the conclusion that I've just stepped on a land mine. "When I was younger, a lit-tle tyke, I wouldn't look any-body in the eye, I would just look righ-t past them. Like they weren't even _there_." He gets closer and his fingers squeeze tighter and tighter until I feel my jaw begin to creak. "So, one day, this, this, this _freak_," he spits the word hatefully and laughs an angry laugh, "Tells me, 'Hey kid, what's the matter? Think you're too good to look at someone?'" he licks his lips frantically. "So, so, see I was a quiet type of kid so what do I do? _I look away_. Then he grabs me by the collar and tells me, 'I'll make sure you always remember to look at someone when they're talking to ya,' and then he gives me this big. Wide. Smile."

He grins, slow and furious, "Now then, chi-ca. Do you need a re-minder _too_?" he sounds eager to give one.

I whimper, curl in myself and away from him and shake my head.

He nods rapidly, "Good. Goo-d. No-w, then, I will be back tomorrow for my uh suit, but be-fore I go, I would like to know the uh damage." He indicates with his eyes to the clothes.

His fingers slowly unwrap from my jaw and he backs away, one step at a time.

I slide down the wall and stare up at him dumbly. I felt the strength behind that hand. He could have broken my jaw, or twisted my head off like a Barbie's. He wanted to, he really, really wanted to.

I stand shakily and move around him to the papers on the coffee table, where a list of the prices and hours I've written down are.

The cost of the materials, plus the amount of material used, multiplied by the hours I worked and what I charge by the hour.

"Four thousand eight hundred flat," I spit out the curved estimation as quick as I can and hold my stomach, my abdomen where the scorpion lashes out, stings and twists with poison. It doesn't matter if he sees anymore. He _knows_, I don't know how but he fucking knows.

He nods his head, "Sounds fair, I'll be back to-mor-row then chi-ca. And uh, by the uh by, don't try that door thing again." He looks down at me with narrow eyes before he walks over to the door and tosses something over his shoulder. "Sweet dreams, chi-ca."

He shuts the door behind him quietly.

…

…

_Perdóneme perdón, y por favor, por favor no me dolió_: I'm sorry, forgive me, and please, please don't hurt me.

_Tonta_: stupid (feminine)

_La cocina es la fortaleza de mujer, Julia. : _The kitchen is woman's fortress, Julia

_Mire cómo ellos botan_: Look how they bounce

_Entrégueme de esta mal_. : Deliver me from this evil.


	7. House of Flies

**Notes: **

**I apologize for the late update. I am off on Winter Break and had a lot of free time but World of Kung Fu was eating my brain. . **

**WOW you guys have a clearer sense of what Julia looks like than I do. XD That's terrible (for me). Anyway, thanks for answering the question, as it's easier for ME to picture her now too. In this chapter, it explores a much different side of Julia that hasn't been brought to light explicitly, but hopefully it remains still realistic. **

**Also note that the purpose of Julia is not for me to get you to like her, though it IS nice, it is to show you the effect of the Joker, in a (hopefully) non-Mary Sue environment. **

**WARNING: Lot of Spanish & Caló in this chapter but it couldn't be avoided. And, a very, very skewed timeline. I lost myself too. **

**Weird Fishes, thank you for replying to the description question because like everyone else, it helped a lot. Also, it seems like everyone was on the same page on Julia's physical appearance which it pretty freaking awesome. **

**REPOST due to some grammatical errors. **

…

…

_House of Flies_

…

…

I wake at five in the morning to eat a fruit salad with a glass of bourbon when I find a stack of bills on the coffee table. I swallow and make my way to them. The clothes of outlandish colors are gone, vanished. I see a small note on the stack of cash and I already know where it came from.

Yesterday a mob bank had been robbed. The news report had said that three men wearing clown masks had entered; armed and dangerous, and held up the bank. The bank's manager had come out shooting with a shotgun, killing one of the men.

Like the rest of Gotham, I'd watched as if hypnotized when they showed some of the footage on the security camera, not looking away, disgusted and horrified but intrigued and unable to look away. The only sad faced clown shot his man and left something in the bank manager's mouth which I could only assume to be a bomb, since the goddamn bank had blown up.

I had been watching it in terrific fear when the sad faced clown had pulled his mask away to reveal makeup. The black and white security camera probably didn't do him justice. He wore makeup freely in Gotham, show cased himself, flaunting and everything. It makes me think of some of the celebrations that my grandmother's tribe would hold on the reservation at times. Slick trails of yellows and reds and whites while they praised the Creator and the Spirits of the dead.

Why would he wear makeup?

The People of the Crow Nation had been known to wear the most war paint, to prove themselves worthy of such wear. My grandmother Nascha told me the People of the Crow wore war paint to scare and intimidate, to shake the very spirit of the man that way he may gain his strength and eat his fear.

Maybe, it strikes me then while watching it, when they replayed his face over and over asking if anyone knew who this man was, to come forth and identify him, it wasn't makeup to him at all. The Crow Nation was a war nation – bred for killing and bloodletting.

Maybe, I think, it is this fucking psycho's war paint. Shake the spirit, frighten the heart, slow the body and eat the fear.

I stare down at the money and back away from it. I get a glass and reach for the bourbon in the cabinet but change my mind and get the whiskey instead. I take a seat on the arm of the sofa and sip at my whiskey, liking the burn that it etches in my throat on the way down.

This money has mob blood on it, civilian blood and probably cop blood. So much blood on so much money.

I sit down and set the whiskey aside so I can start counting. It's all in twenties and fifties and hundreds. He gave me three and a half thousand more than the price I had told him. In the middle of all of it, a smiling jester face peeks out. The joker face's tongue is the head of a serpent. I stare down at it blankly. **Turn ME over**, it says.

I do.

_The eXXXtra is for YOU chica. Have fuuuuunnn_.

_By the way_

_I'm wondERing_

_If_

_We are such good FriEndS_

_That you WoUld_

_TaKe a BulleT_

_For Me. _

The writing is jagged and angry, torn almost at the curves. Precisely torn at the right angles to look rushed and much too angry. Meticulous in a strange sort of way. I take another harsh swallow of whiskey.

I can't tell whether or not it's a threat or he's trying to mind fuck me again. I won't bother myself with the alternatives of what it could be and shove it forcefully from my mind.

I'll take the extra and keep my mouth shut, move out of this shithole apartment and further away from the Narrows, quit Ms. Ming's and get a new job. I'll do everything but move out of Gotham.

Why?

I don't know.

I cradle my head in my palms and breathe. First things first, before guilt sets in and makes me sing.

I grab a suitcase from under my bed and haul it out to the living room. I swipe the money into it messily using the entire length of my arm to corral the green stuff in. I zip it up and lock it. I pop the batteries out of my remote and stuff them behind a cushion in the sofa and place the key for the lock in there.

I shove the suitcase back under the bed with a huff and get dressed. Nothing fancy – white jeans and a long crème t-shirt with a turtleneck. I don't even glance at my bed – I deserve that extra fucking money. I deserve it for all the hell I've been through a goddamn suit. I'm not giving it up.

And I'm not being scared out of a town just because of one fucking person again. I'm not. Never, ever again will I be chased from my home. I need this place, like I once needed East Los. I doubt I'll ever be able to leave Gotham.

While I'm putting my purse on and grabbing my keys, I stop and see my bedroom door. A demented smiley face stares back.

I stumble back until I hit the edge of my bed. He was in my room tonight. This night, he'd been in my room while I'd been asleep and he drew _that_. He'd been in my room before but not while I'd been fucking _asleep_. The thought of the _gabacho_ seeing me asleep frightens me more than anything else he's done.

I rip the door open and see my bathroom door has the same face; my front door has once again been traced over – hollow black eyes and a red smile.

I grab the door knob and think I need to go to the police, whip up a sob story of he threatened to kill me, and I was so scared and if they got a doll to tell me to "Show them where they touched you", I'll point to every fucking place on that doll's body.

Rationality says the police will protect you. Keep you safe and out of harm's way.

My instincts tell me not to simultaneously. Going to them will get me killed. These people say they can protect you, but all they do is paint a fucking bulls eye on your back and dress you up in camouflage. I need a good place to stay, somewhere safer. Somewhere in Gotham, and I'll need a new job. I'll need someone who I can trust with this.

I scratch at my hip and run my hands through my hair compulsively. There's an itch under my skin that I feel like I'll have to peel my flesh off to scratch at my bones. The itch, the scratch, the irritant digs deeper and my ears ring. I close my eyes to think.

_Carlos_.

My eyes snap open and I go back to my bedroom, and yank open a drawer in my dresser. I search through my underwear, looking for my slip joint knife. I feel its handle, cool and comforting. I grip it and pull it out, shaking off the undergarments that catch on it.

It's a Dark Stag model, and it curves a little. But it's sharp. Always sharp.

When I leave, I lock the door behind me and press the down button on the elevator.

I'll have to go talk to Carlos, unfortunately because there's bad blood between us. Always has been, always will be. I hope there won't be any need for my knife, that Carlos will be sensible – and that I will be too, because God only knows I'm not known for my rationale – but if it comes down to a dirty fight. I will win.

I always have in the past, and that kind of thing doesn't just go away.

"Julie, the hell you doin' out so late?" I freeze and turn slowly to see Bishop looking at my with his head cocked. His green, green eyes stare into me. "Julie, girl, c'mere you look like you seen a ghost." With a big, dark hand he waves me closer but he's the one who draws nearer.

Apparently, he just got off the graveyard shift and is still in his police uniform. He's a rookie, but everyone seems to love him. I can't blame them.

He places a hand on my shoulder and the warmth seeps through immediately. "You ain't goin' drinking again, are ya?" he asks suspiciously.

I paste on a smile. It's tiring. _Where the fuck are the goddamn elevators?_

"Nah, just going out to see an old friend," I lie through my teeth easily.

Bishop grins, all big white square teeth. "Seein' Jack on a late night by ya lonesome?"

I force my gag reflex to calm, force the bile back down my gullet and now I taste the acid in the back of my throat. I'm saved from having to come up with an answer when Bishop frowns at me suddenly and looks totally, completely serious.

"Julie, I know you got good instincts, but that Jack guy, somethin' ain't right 'bout him, you get me? Just be careful Julie, please," I blink, I'm a little surprised. Bishop is pleading with me to be careful.

I nod slowly. "Of course Bishop. I always am."

He smiles again and I hear the elevator ding. "I know. Take care, there's been a lot of freaks out lately."

"Bye Bishop," I say while I step in the elevator. The elevator doors close before bishop can say the same to me. I can't help this chilling feeling running down my spine that crawl and makes a cold nest in my heart. Something is wrong. Terribly, horrifically fucked.

Something, but I don't know what.

The elevator doors slide open and I get out, whistling for a cab while I continue to weigh my options and think about Carlos and the pros and the cons of this situation I'm going to get myself in to. I ignore that cold creeping feeling running down my back as best as I know how.

I hope it won't come down to that, since Carlos owes me but if it does, then it does. It's been a while since I've had a knife fight, but I remember enough to be a danger to Carlos. When you live by Adriana's rules, you learn fast and it sticks.

I get into a cab that pulls up and slide the cab driver a twenty.

I direct the cab driver down further from where I live and I tell him to stop at this posh looking neighborhood. I get a cold, sick feeling in my stomach. I once promised myself I would never come here. To this place.

I stare at this expensive home and wonder how just how many wetbacks Carlos hired for it to be built.

I get out and start walking, and stop when I come across a three story house with Halloween decorations set out on the yard. The pumpkin is probably hiding a goddamn motion detector. I crack my neck and look around, scouting the place out for anything else.

No dogs.

You're slipping Carlos.

I look up at the black iron gate with a dove or fucking kind of poultry splaying its wings out freely. The piercing ends shoot straight up at the sky like spearheads. I rip my shoes off and stuff them in my purse before I back up and throw my purse over the other side.

I grip the gate and start climbing. I grunt. Jesus Christ this was easier ten years ago.

The corners and edges or parts of the gate dig into my ribs and hips and elbows while I haul my ass up over the top. I set a foot in between two of the iron poles and lift myself steadily. I wobble a little before I'm able to set my other foot up. I bend a little and jump.

My landing is messy. I hear an ankle crack and I hiss angrily, "Mother _fucker_," I clutch at my ankle and crawl to my purse before I use the gate as a balance so I can stand.

I limp unsteadily to the door and edge around the smiling jack-o-lantern so I don't set it off. I ring the doorbell twice and get my knife out.

I hear muffled footsteps before the door swings wide open to reveal a disheveled, but clean cut Mexican-American man in a dark blue plush bathrobe. "Who the hell – Julia?" he looks surprised.

He looks around me and eyes my now grass-stained white jeans then, "How'd you get in?"

"Hopped the fence and went around your pumpkin," I snarl. I'm in no mode for niceties.

He laughs and it's strained, like a cord about to snap. "You could've called, Julia."

I sneer, "You know I couldn't." His laughing dies down and stares at me seriously. If I had called, he would've had a restraining order placed against me again. This was the only way I could do this.

He sniffs and leans against the doorway, blocking my entrance. "What, you here to tell me about what I did to my cousin, again?" his guilt surfaces a little. He lowers his voice, "I know what happened before was terrible and I hadn't meant for it to happen, but it's in the past now and you of all people should know that the past should stay buried" –

I cut him off, "That's not why I'm here."

He looks down at me, "Why then?"

I run my unoccupied hand through my hair in a tired motion and I feel like I need a smoke. It's not really that I feel tired, I'm so wired up from the drive here and the thoughts that remain fiercely dominant that I can't stop thinking. "It's a long story. Let me in." Viciously, I remind myself of a mixed up déjà vu where I'd been the pig and someone else had been the wolf.

It feels good to have fangs again.

"No, you think I want you anywhere near my family?" his tone is incredulous and shocked.

"I know you don't alright? I just, just need some help – and advice." The taste of the words in my mouth is sour. My breath is coming in shorter. The adrenaline is pumping, pumping, pumping and I can feel the wire in my blood twisting and coiling like a spring.

It feels like some of the best foreplay I've had. I start grinding my teeth and I can hear the drum beat of my heart overriding the white noise of the world. I have to calm down. I need to be rational, not rash.

_Cálmate Julia. Esta bien, cálmate, es bien Julia_.

From the disgusted sneer that overtakes his face I'm already reacting. "Hell no"- I press down harshly on my knife and hear the hiss-like click of it popping it out and hold I the knife to the soft flesh of the back of his ear.

"_Permítaseme en maltido cerdo_," I don't want to be this person again, but if it means staying alive, then I will be whoever the fuck I have to be.

But being this person means I'm in _control_. I have control over my actions and over another person's again. It's been a long, long time since the tables have been turned. People say the person you hate the most is always the person you love. I hate this woman; this woman who hides her burn scars, who pretends to love men only to leave them in the middle of the night, who lies to her friends and family, who has an unfortunate talent with a good sharp knife.

No matter how much I've always willed her away, this part of me, she has and always will be there.

I'd have it no other way.

He stares at me and I stare back. "_Yo le podría tener cerró para la vida_," he hisses at me while he backs away and I follow him, keeping a firm grip on the handle and a good hold on his throat. I force my nails down against his flesh. He winces.

"_Sí, usted puede_," I murmur and turn him to the living area where a beige leather couch sits invitingly. I force him to sit down and snarl against his other ear, "_Pero antes usted hace, estaré llevando sus pelotas como pendientes_."

I feel him swallow heavily. A primal part of me laughs_, Hope that sinks in fucker_. It's nice, being on the other side of the fence for once – being the monster instead of the victim again.

"_Que, que hace usted desea_?" he asks, watching me.

I sit down next to him and let go of his throat but aim the knife straight for his _cajones_. I hold it there and watch him carefully. "My mother worked herself to death to help you pay off a debt you owed, because you asked her to, when she needed medicine for her sickness, she gave it up so you could have some money, you _fuck_.

He opens his mouth but I twist the blade closer, letting him feel the coldness. "Shut up, she died before you could ever repay her." Memories of my mother, pallid and coughing up blood in the middle of the night resurface and the daughter I had never been to her cries. "You owe me a debt in blood, for her at least."

He doesn't, not really. It wasn't the money that she helped him out with that killed her – in the end it was something else. Something phantom and ghostly, an ephemeral being that existed solely within her deserted and abandoned mind. Her disease hadn't been the actual cause of her death. She overworked herself and her heart, sure, but she killed herself. Somewhere within her mind, something was off kilter, off balance and in the end it simply snapped and broke away. Always had been since my father's untimely death.

Maybe longer.

Either way, Carlos wasn't to blame, in a colder sense, now it's almost convenient and coincidental that she died after helping him manage his debt without notifying his parents. For me at least.

"She chose to do that because she was a good person and she was family, but you, you were the goddamn plague on her, the one that leeched the life out of her" – I backhand him brutally and prick at flesh with the knife; he gasps and tries to twist away.

"_Me debes la deuda ahora_." He settles down finally when I say that.

"Then what do you want?" I see him sweating now, trembling a little and I think back to my _perrucha_ days. I attempt to blink the old excitement away.

"I need a place to stay, not here," I add when he goes to protest, "But somewhere nice, out of the Narrows, and I'll need a new job. A good one."

He narrows his eyes, "_Qué lo consiguió usted en Julia?_"

I lick my lips.

"You know that fucking _lacra_, the one that robbed the mob bank?" he nods warily. "I made him a suit. It's a purple fucking suit, with all these fucking crazy ass colors and he paid me with the mob's money that he stole from _that fucking bank_."

Carlos says nothing, allowing me to go on.

"I don't want him to find me." I say lamely, as if it hadn't been implied via my desperate entrance to Carlos' home.

"_Qué tal la policía?_"

"_Confianza de la policía de Gotham? Cuando tengo dinero me turba?" _I ask and I wonder what Carlos takes me for.

He rubs his face with a hand, "_Mierda_." I can feel his body shaking, shivering. He knows what I did in the past, how I did it. He knows my ugly side. I see his face; paler and sweaty, his forty-something year old wrinkles looking more prominent.

I feel like making this feeling of being in control last. I want it to.

"All I want is a place to stay and a good job. That's it. You owe me that at least." I don't move the knife, but hold it there steadily.

Carlos sneers at me. "I don't owe you shit. You're like a fucking parasite Julia. You suck the life out of everyone around you," his voice is trembling but he keeps going and it makes me grip my knife tighter. "And you know what? Whether or not you got involved with that girl, you get what you deserve. All-all you do is oh poor me, poor me, when you had a good life, _mija_. You had a g-good one."

I'm quiet for a long moment and I watch Carlos. My being quiet scares him, I know.

I lean in to speak, "I was a kid when that happened. You expect a fucking kid to know when they've got something good? Especially a _swata_ like me?" I lift the knife and watch Carlos try to squirm from it, but I keep my hand at his throat. "By the time I realized it she was bleeding her heart out for you. You didn't even call, while I watched her die slowly because we didn't have medical. She died, Carlos. The least you can do is let _me_ live."

I hiss into his ear, going straight for his heart. It's soft there, the flesh and the skin; it has no hard covering like an oyster. It's something beautiful and easy.

Carlos covers his mouth with his hand before he takes it away, "Fine. I'll get you a place and a job. I'll call you tomorrow but after this, stay away from me and my family or I will have you locked up." I see the tears in his eyes.

I nod, "That's all I wanted." I take the knife away and leave it out, but I don't put it back in my purse. I leave it balanced on my knee.

Carlos and I share a glance and I know he won't rat me out, that the guilt that has taken root and will grow. "And Julia," he says, "I meant it when I said I was sorry about what happened to your mother."

I nod, "Yeah, I know." He wipes his face with a hand and turns to the clock.

"She was a really good person. She loved you too." His voice was a whisper, "I'm sorry."

I snort and blink away the heat behind my eyes at the mention of the woman who had been lost her entire lifetime, "She chose her death." I fold the knife up and put it in my purse, before I take my shoes out and start strapping them on, mindful of my now throbbing ankle.

"Do you want me to get you a cab?" he asks and I look over at him, raising my brow.

"What's with the sudden friendliness?" my tone makes him flinch. _Carlos_, I think, _you've got a bigger heart than you'd like to admit. And I'm going to use that_.

"Does your…father's mother call, or anything? Doesn't anybody talk to you?" he inquires and he sounds pained to do so.

Hea Woo sends money when she knows I'm down on my luck. She would call a few times every month, but I don't due to long distance cost. I am her only grandchild, and obviously when the time comes, her sole inheritor. I don't bother her for money, and I am not going to tell her what I got into.

She is a frightening force to deal with. She got all of her accumulative wealth and estate by feeding her arranged, elderly and abusive husband his death – in massive quantities of salt – in pork, beef, fish, duck and goose, seafood. She fed him the works, and watched him die of salt poisoning for five years.

Hea Woo is a hard woman to cross. If I ever told her the kind of trouble I'd gotten myself into, she'd demand that I marry someone and move out of Gotham immediately. For whatever indiscernible reason that I can't grasp – I will never be able to leave Gotham. Something like the battered housewife syndrome.

"She looks after me once in a while, calls and checks up. I don't want her to worry," I say, and finger the knife in my purse absentmindedly.

Carlos licks his lips, "How-how did you get to meet that," his face twists, "Freak?"

I shrug and feel a wanton need for alcohol, or maybe a cigarette, or a quick fuck that I can leave before they notice. I rub Gabriel to soothe it. I'm no angel, but I'm trying.

"I watched him threaten somebody, then he came into my shop and ordered a suit."

"You watched him threaten somebody and you didn't bother to call the police?"

"The police? The fucking police? What the shit are you on?" I ask in my disbelief and almost shout it. "The police in Gotham are as bad as the ones in East Los. What would happen if they just wrote it off but he knew anyway? Huh? These, these police don't care. They pretend to because it gets them a merit badge of fucking honor or duty or it marks them a hero. These people are the fucking wolves in sheep's clothing." I look over at Carlos who only watches me with wide eyes. "What?"

He shakes his head, "You can't group people together Julia, it matters by the individuals."

"Bull-fucking-shit Carlos, the police will always be what they are deep down. I'm as good as dead if I go to the police, and as for before, it wasn't any of my business." I waved my hand.

Carlos' jaw drops. "None of your business? Julia, that man could've died because of you, because you didn't help him!" he hisses loudly; trying to make sure he doesn't wake anyone in the house up.

_He's already dead Carlos_. I narrow my eyes at him instead and take offense instead of defense, "Carlos, you grew up in the upper middle class of Gotham, I grew up in the devil's asshole. You want to talk to me about what _is_ and _isn't_ my business?" Carlos at least knows the gangs and the drug dealers with the _mulas_ that stayed on my streets. He's at least seen them a couple times before.

Carlos leans back, pressing his fingers to his temples and lets out a big exhale. He's older than me and one may think he's wiser, that he's had more experience. He doesn't. I do. The _gabacho_, no matter how much he fucking scares me, was right. Environment makes a person. Location, location, location.

"I'll talk to Anthony about setting you up with a place. He won't ask questions if I say that you just need a better place to stay, since you live near the Narrows." Carlos continues to watch me and I wonder what he sees that seems to frighten him so. He wants to ask something, say something and I don't know what it is, but he won't say anything.

I stand and look over at him, "I'm going home, and I'll walk. I have things to pick up anyway." I try to make my limp less noticeable while I go to the door. "Open the damn gate would ya? I don't want to break my other ankle."

He gets a remote and presses a button and the gates swing open slowly, creaking ominously as they do.

I walk out of the door.

"Be careful Julia."

I look over my shoulder to see Carlos, standing in the doorway with his robe and house slippers and his pursed look. "Of course I will be."

I walk out of the driveway without a backward glance. What had been a blank, dark early morning has become true daylight. People are already bustling in the streets that I walk on, out of Carlos' neighborhood, the sun is shining; a pale discus in the rose and peach colored sky.

The grass-stains on my pants aren't that noticeable, thankfully, but I suppose my limp is because instead of having to shove through people, they're letting me go first, or going around me. I'll start in on Bruce Wayne's pirate suit, but I need to pick up some silk for the men's blouse – something billowy and white and I'll starch it with salt water for a better effect.

On the crosswalk, someone breathes down my neck.

Masculine. Tall. Cologne, fresh pressed suit that I can smell detergent on.

I don't look back and merely continue along, going through the streets of Gotham with a tail. I can't lead him to my place. I feel a big, large hand clamp down on my shoulder and I stiffen, turn and see a tank of a black man staring me down, mustache carefully combed and carved.

"You Julia Hwang?" his rough sandstone baritone is different from Bishop's smoother marble timbre.

I clench my jaw and meet him up, eye for eye. "Yeah, who wants to know?"

He leans back from me, blotting out the daylight, "Gambol does. We got a source that says you've had…dealings with the Joker."

I furrow my brow, "The what?"

"The Joker," he leans down to me, "Guy wears makeup, dresses up in a purple suit and got scars on his face."

I feel my once confident color fade. I am in the bottom of the food chain again. I say nothing that agrees or disagrees with this. "Gambol would like to meet with you personally. Today."

I look around for an exit. "What-what time?"

He shakes his head and licks his teeth. I see a gold tooth. "Right now, he doesn't want you running off before you the chance to get acquainted." He tongues his gold tooth.

I look in his eyes and I see it. If I go with him, I will die. Or I'll be used as bait that won't work, and then die.

I open my mouth and scream as loudly and obnoxiously as I fucking can. He pulls back and I slap him, stomp on his foot and shove him from me. The crowds turn and eye him warily, letting me by.

I can't run but I make due.

I don't look back and am trying to find a suitable place to go in – a place Gambol would have no control over. I can't find anything and this makes me want to cry. A big hand closes over my elbow and snaps me into an alley way.

A hand claps over my mouth.

I drag my feet, and look out into the streets. It's broad fucking daylight. Does nobody see this? I see the irony of my current situation. It doesn't help and only fuels my frustration. I feel tears slide down the corners of my eyes.

"Listen up bitch, I ain't got time for cryin' games so you best listen. Gambol only wants to talk," something in his voice gives the lie away and I lurch forward, attempt to rejoin the mass herd of Gotham. He's made of iron or steel. I don't give a shit. He won't budge.

"He wants ya help in catchin' the clown." I make noises behind my hand, because it won't work. I feel something cold press against my side. The muzzle of a gun. "You shut up and be cool and we won't have any problems. I don't like hittin' women."

"Gam_bol _wants to uh send a message to _me_?"

The voice creeps down the narrow alleyway. We both turn and I am lifted off my feet to become a full body shield. "You want her, you come back with me to Gambol," and he smiles like he's won.

_Oh you stupid fuck. You've killed us both_.

I was just about to get out too.

The Joker leans his head forward and down, like a dog ready to bite. He smiles, baring his yellow teeth. His face is naked of makeup, without a conspicuous suit. Street clothes.

"You can _keep_ her if you want. I was just uh _wonder_ing what it is Gambol wantsssss," he asks and there's a gun in his hands I hadn't seen before, pointing straight at me. "Because see, I was _looking_ for uh re-cruit-ments when one of the other _boys _came looking for me and said the same thing, until I made him _squeal_ about what _you_ were up to." He starts giggling.

"He already said, "Dead or alive", clown. I'm bringing you in either way."

The Joker sighed, "He's still _serious_ about that? Sha_m_e." He looks at me slyly, "I love the suit. Perrrrrrfect. Great wor_k_. I think I'll be _deign_ing you my _official_ tai-lor. Unfortunately, because of this predicament, I have to say this may not work out." He fakes a theatrical frown.

I blink the tears and they slide slickly into the thug's palm.

"Did you uh get my message?" I must make some noise that is probably a whimper or something because he goes on nodding, "Good, goo_d_. Because _I_ know just like _you_ know that you de-serve the tip." He waves the gun while he speaks. "At any rate, since we are suuuuuuch good _friends,_ I feel better know_ing_ that you'll uh under-stand this."

Gambol's man tenses behind me and tightens his grip, "The fuck you doin' clown?"

_Move your arm and shoot him you stupid fuck! _

I don't bother since it'll be muffled so I just keep crying.

"_Chica_," I look at him and he's a blurred mass of grey and pale skin. "This is uh going to hurt _you_ a _lot_ more than it's going to hurt _him_."

I wail behind the thug's palm in anguish.

"What the"- the thug's arm raises much too late, because I am still the fucking meat shield and I hear another gun go off. Time slows, it doesn't stop, but it slows.

I am punched in the chest with it. My air escapes me. I look down through the tears that have stopped flowing and murkily I see blood blooming on my chest. Lemon and club soda with baking powder will clean that blood right out.

I hear a wet gurgle at my ear.

Arms like steel bands let me go and I vaguely hear people screaming, just screaming. I stumble and fall to my knees before vertigo twists my world this and that way. I fall to my side and a beer bottle digs into my ribs.

Pain doesn't set in until later. If I wake up and I'm in pain, then I'll be alive.

Maybe I won't wake up. I gasp in air and hear a wet squelching sound. I'm feeling colder.

A shoe stops before my line of vision.

A hand pats my cheek.

A voice, high pitched and strained, speaks. I barely recognize that it is a voice and not some fucked ringing in my ears.

My vision dims, and blanks.

…

…

_Cálmate Julia. Esta bien, cálmate, es bien Julia _– Calm down Julia. It's okay, calm down, it's alright Julia.

_Permítaseme en maltido cerdo _– Let me in you fucking pig

_Yo le podría tener cerró para la vida_. – I could have you locked up for life.

_Sí, usted puede_ – Yes you could.

_Pero antes usted hace, estaré llevando sus pelotas como pendientes_. – But before you do, I'll be wearing your balls as earrings.

_Que, que hace usted desea_? – What, what do you want?

_Me debes la deuda ahora _– You owe me the debt now.

_Qué lo consiguió usted en Julia – _What did you get yourself into Julia?

_Qué tal la policía? _– What about the police?

_Confianza de la policía de Gotham? Cuando tengo dinero me turba?" _– Trust Gotham's police? When I have mob money on me?

_Mierda – _fucking shit

_Policia_ - police


	8. Red right hand

Haha…haha…so…I was walking along minding my own business when Life suddenly came up to me and was "Bitch what'choo doin'?!" and I was all "I'm just walkin' here!" and Life was "Now you ain't!" and then beat the shit out of me. And that…that is why this fic was on extended leave. That and this chapter hates me or I hate it, I'm not sure anymore. There's just a lot of hate. I do apologize but hey…least you're not paying for it. XD Also. I will be replying to your last reviews and feel free to ask questions which I will answer as long as they don't spoil anything.

But! I'm still very, very, very sorry about the enormous wait for the 8th chapter.

I do know that this chapter won't make up for the uh MONTHS I've been gone and the fact that Miss Malfaisant PMed me like a long time ago and I haven't checked my email in uh MONTHS makes me feel really terrible…Still, I hope that this chapter is okay…If anyone is still reading this anyway. XD You'll be seeing another one of Julia's ugly sides in this chapter which is colored from her prejudiced views centered on police.

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_Red Right Hand_

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There is a spot on my world; dark and growing. It is a growth, a mold, a weed. It spreads and spreads and blinds me, renders me deaf and dumb. It goes down the wrong way in my throat, down, down that dark rabbit hole before it submerses into my blood stream, freezing my blood. It clogs my arteries and leaves me splashing about in darkness without senses. It snaps me in halves, in quarters, in pieces.

Small, incoherent sequences of my life flash and play like an unedited movie.

My father is there, and he is bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest. A fifteen year old boy rummages through his pockets and takes his wallet. The glass bottle of cough medicine my father had bought from a local drug store is shattered on the ground. He coughs blood, hacks and spits. There is a rattle in his throat and he turns on his stomach to crawl away.

My mother is sewing a dress that I never asked for. Her lips are cracked and bleeding from dehydration. The dress is ivory with a sunflower stitched on the bottom right hand corner. Dark circles haunt her eyes; her face is older than it should be. Grey hairs entwine in her black mane. Her reading glasses slowly slide down her nose. Sometimes, in the quiet and in the dark, she whips her head around lightning fast and her eyes search for something invisible.

A girl with beautiful eyes, with beautiful hair and beautiful everything leans down and bites my ear. Softly, she murmurs that she wants me to spend the night at her house, in the middle class part of town where the lawns are better taken care of, where there are cul-de-sacs and friendly neighbors. I am there, suddenly, as if time has warped and I stand awkwardly by her bedside. She tells me to slip in next to her. Best friends, she tells me, always share the same bed.

My uncle, Santos, is working in his shop, changing a car's oil. He tells me stories about him and my father when they'd go up for a drive to Santa Barbara to fish there with other friends. My father, Santos says and he makes a choked sound in his throat. He tells me I have my father's eyes. I watch Santos cry a little and tell me I look exactly like them. My mother and my father. He tells me, pleads with me to never grow up because I'm all he has left. I remember thinking, _you poor son of a bitch_.

Santos asks me to move with him to Ventura, where his girlfriend is. I remember declining. Adriana is there, in the shadows and she slips up behind me and crosses her arms over my chest, under my arms. She leans forward and whispers to me, while I watch Santos drive away after we had a tearful good bye, that when I look so wretched, she thinks she could love me.

I am not in California. I am in Gotham. I smoke too much, I drink too much and I fuck men I don't care about too much. I'm a whole lot of bad and not a lot of good. My neighbor, a tall black man grins at me rakishly and asks me if I need help moving in. I tell him no. He persists, not because he's a horny fucker but he's chivalrous as I'll find out later, and I kindly tell him to back off or I'll cut off his balls and wear them like earrings, and would he kindly move the fuck over because my suitcase is really very fucking heavy.

The first time I walk into Ming's Tailor to get a job I am confronted with a scene of a little old Chinese lady chasing out a middle aged man begging for money with a meat cleaver. She sees me, slaps the meat cleaver blade first into the wooden counter and barks at me, "What you want?!"

I walk past a small Catholic church with the Saints and the archangels painted on stained glass windows. I want to walk in and breathe in. I want to breathe in hope and faith. The gargoyles on top of the church snarl at me viciously and glare down at me.

I open my eyes and my chest feels tight, like someone's drawn a thick rope over me and tied me down. I take a deep breath and feel it rattle in my chest. I feel like I've been playing bumper cars with a semi truck. A white room, clean scent of antiseptic and monitors, IV needles in my arm. I huff and relax, ignoring the burning in my chest. I'm in a hospital room.

A hand catches my hair, goes through it and catches my scalp with nails.

I look up and see Hae Woo sitting on a chair beside me. Dark dashes bring out the seriousness in her eyes, her long lashes and slanted Korean eyes look down upon me. "Always the troublemaker, Julia." She says and her hand sweeps through my hair again, catching tangles and patiently working them out. My heart is in my throat. My stomach has dropped. When the hell did she get here?

"The hospital called your nearest living relative, Carlos," she stumbles a bit over the unfamiliar name, "And he called me," here, her lip curls, "And told me that you'd been shot." Her gaze is dark and disquieting. "How many times will you have to kiss Death on the cheek before it decides it will kiss you on the mouth?" her fingers continue to comb through my hair. "More importantly, why are you so determined to find out when that love you have for Death will be reciprocated?" her gaze is intense and bears down upon me, and I float in and out of partial consciousness and full consciousness. "Once Death loves you, it never lets you go Juliana."

I lick my lips and make an attempt at speech but all that comes out is a hoarse croak that rattles my throat. Hae Woo looks away but continues to thread her fingers through my hair. "You are all I have left Juliana. You may not want any kinship, but you cannot choose your family Juliana," she leans down and presses her face, youthful despite being in her mid-sixties, against my hair. "I never chose you, but that doesn't change the fact that I have you, and that I do love you."

"I'm sorry," I say and I mean it this time, this time when I can't see Hae Woo's tiger-woman face and her dark eyes that have seen so much. It comes out roughly, a rattle, and she sighs into my hair. A surge of warmth that both burns and soothes me rises in my stomach and I love Hae Woo, my grandmother who had tried many times to get me back up on my feet, but I'd been too true to my real nature and bit at the hand that had tried to feed me.

"I know, I know Julia," she pats me on the cheek, and she rises. "I'm staying at the Wayne Royale Shell, if you like, you may visit and we'll…talk. I'll get the nurse and let her know you're awake." Her hand presses to mine gently, "I'll be right back." She leaves the room and I lie there, on the hospital bed with stringy hair and no decent clothes and a bullet hole in my chest somewhere. I also can't help but feel affection and fondness for the woman who had tracked me down and found me.

These warm feelings continue until I turn a thought over in my mind and I wonder how Carlos got Hae Woo's number.

The thought cuts itself off when a nurse enters and she checks my monitors. She checks the bandage on my chest, unwraps it and looks at the little hole sewn shut. "No sign of infection, red area is clearing up, didn't rip her stitches…" the nurse continues her little one side monologue and I look at Hae Woo who stands beside the door in her expensive silk clothing.

"How did Carlos contact you?" the words sound slurred as if I'd just woken up.

Her dark eyes narrow slightly, "He called an old friend of yours. She lives in New York I believe."

The nurse eavesdrops a bit before she rises and tells me she'll update the doctor and come back to pass on whatever decision she makes.

It doesn't matter. I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack. "Who?" I whisper, a rush of fear clenches at my heart.

"A Mrs. Adriana Blanc, but she's been a widow for a few years." Hae Woo stares at me. "Carlos told me she even offered to fly out so she could check on you. I told him to tell her that I'd care for you for the time being," she smoothes her skirt down and sits on the chair.

My tongue is paper and my heart monitor beeps faster. Hae Woo looks at the monitor, alert, "Julia" –

"She's not here, is she?" I feel like a little girl for asking that but I honestly can't help but ask that.

Hae Woo shakes her head, and she watches my heart monitor slow. She pauses, "She told me to tell you to give her a call. She misses you." She frowned, "She told me that she hadn't heard from you in a few years. She knew quite a bit about you Juliana." Hae Woo eyes me with her dark eyes and her tiger-woman stare. My right hand grips the sheet over me fiercely and I can feel my nails dig into my palm. My fear corrupts me. Hae Woo is a tiger of a woman. She can smell it. The fear. The fear of the past and the unknown.

She mutters into her palm and I will not understand the words until she leaves and I am left by myself in a white sterile room.

Before I can question what Hae Woo says, the nurse comes back. She smoothes down my sheets mechanically, and tells me that I'll be discharged next week, maybe by Tuesday after they run more tests to assure that I am healthy. I'm given pain killers and orange juice.

A cell phone rings and Hae Woo opens a leather hand bag and flips a phone open. She speaks in Korean. I remember my father taught it to me when I was younger, but I'd forgotten all of it. The call ends abruptly while the nurse leaves, her sneakers squeaking on the tile floor. Hae Woo looks at me, "I won't be here much longer, I own a business and it is best if I am not away long," she explains and looks regretful but I shrug.

"S'alright," I say because I'm a big girl. I can handle myself, just not very well when I'm facing a terrorist clown. I'd like to take comfort in the fact that probably a lot of people can't when facing _that_ anyway though.

Hae Woo nods softly, "I will be leaving here in three days. We should have lunch, or coffee. To talk, not to…argue." It's something we're both guilty of; arguing more than talking when facing each other.

I agree and Hae Woo leaves with a soft, graceful good bye.

"_Julia, what have you ever done to make Death love you?_"

I sigh and fall against my pillow. My chest burns as I breathe and I try to fall back asleep but I can't. I never wanted to leave LA, just like I don't want to leave Gotham. It's the battered housewife syndrome I think, that, and I'm not a bird that will fly away for the winter and maybe come back if the winds don't change. No. I'm the badger – that ugly, grumpy old sonuvabitch that makes its hole, and then lives and dies in it.

I was shot by that _lacra_, who killed that thug through me – literally. I watched him do it, pull that trigger and aim right through me like I was just a pane of glass. Bang. With those ugly, ragged scars and that fucking laugh from hell, all he did was giggle like a little goddamn school girl with a secret. I inhale and wonder who the hell brought me in. Some Good Samaritan or a dope dealer who wanted no part of a dead woman. Either way, I'm still breathing – however fucking unfortunate that is.

The door opens again and in comes the good doctor. She smiles at me in a tired fashion, worry lines marking up her face like a territory map. "Well, it seems you were supposed to come back to us for a follow up on your head injuries in a week…but Ms. Hwang, we didn't necessarily mean like this." She raises a brow at me, part patronizingly and part suspicion. They might pull the "you don't have to stay with the abusive boyfriend/husband" card on me. Too bad it's neither. Also too bad that I can't really leave him. I could. I just fear for my life like any good Catholic.

I shrug and hiss in pain after I do that because sonuvabitch that hurt like a mother to just move my shoulder. She eyes me, "You were only given Motrin for the headache that usually comes after you've been out for a few days, so I'm not prescribing you anything higher than that as of now." I stare. Excuse? The fuck?

"Why the hell not?" apparently, I'm not in the best of moods. Sorry doc. The doctor stares back evenly.

"Because now that you just woke up, we want you lucid for the detectives."

"Detectives," I deadpan. Seriously? I don't get a fucking break?

She nods firmly, lips pursing. "Yes, they're waiting outside so whenever you're ready…"

I wave her off. "Sure, why the hell not?" I mutter, glaring at her while I do so; pain flaring across my chest like it's burning. The doctor looks irritated but do I give a fuck? No. Fuck her and fuck the detectives standing between me and good meds.

She goes out, shuts the door and a moment later, two men appear. The older one had graying hair, Caucasian and he enters first. The next one is young, white and on edge. I stare back and want to bare my teeth. I hate _policia_. Always have because no matter what you've got say, they look at what's obvious, draw a fucking conclusion and don't give a goddamn about reasons. Since they're got the authority, they make shots they don't really give a fuck. If they're white and you're white with crack on you, they won't tackle your ass to the asphalt, but if you're black then they'll gladly beat the shit out of you.

The older one smiles and draws up a folding chair, "Can I have a seat?" he asks, smooth as can be; fucking unbelievable. But I see his eyes, the way he looks at me, thinking '_wetback'_ or '_chink'. _He's from the older generation who hates gays and blacks, who can see a Mexican working out in their garden and know that's all they'll ever come to, who can see an Asian kid and think they're good at math or some retarded shit. My eyes narrow. Well, fuck you Mr. American-As-Apple-Fucking-Pie, which isn't even fucking American if you look at the roots of it. It's German. Gnaw on that you self-assured prick-in-my-ass.

"Do I look like I live here?" I snap back. His lips thin and he looks at his younger partner who stares a hole in the side of my head. _Hijo de puta estupido_.

"I'm Detective Fisher, and this is my partner Detective Goren, and we're from the GCPD. You were involved in a shooting" –

"I know what I was involved in. I'm the one who got shot. _Crees que soy tonta algo_?" I see the look of anger that flashes over his face, the fact that I'm reverting to foreign language always gets the pigs riled. They scream and fucking squeal about how _they don't care what other languages you can talk in, they just want an answer damn it_. Why don't they like it? Makes them feel stupid.

"Look lady, you're banged up but there's a guy in the city morgue identified as Leeroy Jacks. Mean anything to you?" the younger one comes 'round and I know they're at their game already. He leans on the edge of the bed, hands pressing down and leaning into my face. His eyes are brown. His hair is brown. His skin is tanned. I narrow my eyes back.

"He the guy who was killed?" I don't play the "who? Who's that? I don't know him" card. Makes you seem suspicious, if you come out with it, it shows you're not playing dumb, it shows that you want to cooperate.

Detective Goren nods, slowly, "Yeah, so you heard of him."

"No, just wouldn't know why else you'd want to know if I knew a Leeroy Jacks."

"Yeah, well, turns out that Leeroy was one of Gambol's boys. We've got about five witnesses who say he approached you on the street, that you ran from him and that he cornered you in an alleyway." Goren looks at me carefully, "We already took your fingerprints to match them to either of the guns found at the crime scene."

I inhale sharply. That's against the law. Illegal and against your personal rights and shit. I know. I've been processed. I didn't okay this crap. "You had no fucking right to do that – I know my goddamn rights!" I bellow angrily and Goren grimaces.

"We did get your permission, you signed a waiver form and we were able to take your prints" –

"I wanna see that goddamn form then." I stare expectantly and they stare back quietly. "C'mon, I wanna see it. I'm not saying a _damn_ word until I see that form."

Detective Fisher leans forward, hands clasped together. "Ms. Hwang," he mutilates my last name, "You have to understand that you are a key witness to a homicide to a mobster. Eye witnesses say that a man dressed in an office suit followed the both of you down the alleyway and as my partner said, we didn't find your fingerprints a match either of the guns, so someone shot the both of you down, now who" –

I lean forward, ignoring the pain flaring, the burning sensation that makes me want to curl up, "Not. A damn word detective. I'm not saying anything until I see that form that I _don't remember_ signing."

Detective Fisher leans back, away from me and hisses, "I could hold you in contempt for this."

My lips start to peel back, and I feel that angry red color flush my face like a rash once my temper starts to sky rocket. "I'll report you for a faulty waiver signature, and then what?"

Detective Fisher's nostrils flares and he moves fast, gripping my upper arm with a tight, fisted grip. I withhold the wince and scowl up at him. "Listen, who was the shooter? Who was he? Was it the Batman?"

I blink and stare, "What? The Batman? Are you fucking out of your goddamn mind?" I try to pull away but Goren comes up and breathes into my face, shoulders hunched like an angry bull.

"If he threatened you, we'll understand and give you protection from him but we need you to say that it was the Batman who did this and testify."

"It wasn't the Batman alright? It-it was that one guy, the Jester!" I declare. Protect the Batman? Not so. I just don't want to make more enemies than necessary. The guy wears all black and is quiet like a goddamn hit man. The fuck would I want to testify against him for nothing?

I realize too late that Fisher's accusation of the shooter being the Batman was a shock-tactic. List someone, something unimaginable, and as if to prove the stupidity of the interrogator, the interrogated spits out a quick, honest answer and corners themselves. Damn it.

Goren slumps back, "The Joker?"

I wave my hand at him flippantly, "Yeah him, whatever. Got these," I rip my arm from Detective Fisher and gesture with both my index fingers a huge smile over my mouth, "And he jerks around kinda like he's got ADD or something." I might as well go with the flow. No turning back now.

Detective Fisher doesn't look happy that I've said the Joker. Well fuck him. He might've been expecting another gangster. "What did he want with Leeroy and you?" Detective Goren looks at me, encouraging me.

I look in his eyes and know that if I tell the truth, I am labeled an accomplice. I do what I've always done best. I lie through my teeth. I remember having to do this with the police when Adriana had cut the brake lines to the teacher's car. "The guy just comes up and says that he's got business with Gambol alright? Some kinda business deal or something, Leeroy," it's strange to say his name and tell this story without having known it beforehand, "freaks and pulls his piece out, starts yelling and calling him a fucking clown."

Detective Goren nods, gesturing me to go on, "So the freak just starts laughing n' asks if he could get an appointment with Gambol. Leeroy makes like he's gonna shoot him but he shot first."

"That answers that," Fisher mutters, "He's still squeezing the mob. Gambol was the first then," Goren nods and scowls, running a hand through his hair. "That doesn't answer what Leeroy wanted from _you_ though."

I turn to him and sneer, "What, I'm too pretty to be a bar-girl type?"

Fisher leans back, "Thought you didn't know Leeroy?"

"I don't know _Leeroy_. I know some guy named _Tyrone_. Least that's what he said at the bar." I gauge Fisher's unconvinced expression. "What, you give your real name away for a one-nighter?" I swallow. I wait. Goren looks at me in a new light. I feel annoyed now. _That doesn't mean I'm going to just jump your bones now you fucking horn dog_. Fisher snorts.

"You're not classy," he tells me, "But I guess he wouldn't go for classy." I glare back but say nothing. I blink when I hear footsteps running, running outside the door. I see the shadows. I can feel my brows pull together. Emergencies I guess. Fisher is too concentrated on interrogating me and Goren seems completely at ease for it to matter much. "So what, you met him at a bar, then what?"

I shrug, "Told me he'd pay me this time. Wanted a good fuck, I said no and ran away."

Fisher raises his brows at me, "You're that good that he'd hunt you down?"

I snort impatiently, wanting my meds or a shot of vodka with lemon, "Hell no. I'm no call girl. He saw me coming out of a boutique. Ya know, window shopping."

"Did he threaten you?"

"He said he didn't like to hit women." I reply evenly.

"And how were you shot then?"

My lips purse and righteous anger fills me up. "He used me as a meat shield. Apparently I failed."

Fisher leans closer, "You're sure it was the Joker?"

"Yeah, I'm sure okay? I'm not fucking blind." I snap back angrily, hearing rushed sounds outside my door and now yelling and screaming. It gets my blood pumping, my heart beating like a drum.

Goren nods, "We're going to need you to specifically identify him, so we're going to ask you to come with us once you're better to talk to our DA" –

Fisher turns to him, "Wait in the car."

Goren blinks at him, slack-jawed, "What?"

"Wait in the car, out. Vamoose." Fisher seems to grow angry and I lean back into my pillows, curling in on myself slowly. "Me n' Ms. Hwang are going to continue our talk alone." Goren looks like he's going to say something but snaps his trap shut and turns heel, walking out in a huff.

Fisher looks at me. "Now that the kid's gone…" he trails off and I watch him closely, feeling very female and very singled out. "Why don't you tell me what really went down? Leeroy didn't like Mexican women; he liked black women and white hookers. You're neither." I gulp, feeling my saliva trail down my throat slowly. "So? If you're not connected to _Leeroy_, you're connected to the _other_ guy, right?"

He leans close and something in his eyes; something that I'm not unaccustomed to seeing is there. That doesn't mean it doesn't scare the living shit out of me. "So how are you connected to him, hm?"

I don't say anything, still in a haze of shock.

"You say you're a bar girl and I wouldn't put it past you. We've had time to talk to a few of your neighbors, they say you've brought home different men, that they haven't seen you with a boyfriend. One man, Bishop? You're good friends with him, right?" he whispers, and it's almost soothing but I know better. He's diving in for the big, grand finale; the big, fat kill.

I swallow and I nod even though it was rhetorical.

"Well our guy Bishop told us that recently you had a different type of man over. Said he had blond hair and brown eyes and _scars_. Real bad scars, a Chelsea Grin but messier. Kind of like our guy we always see on GCN." He pauses, holds up a single finger, indicating for me to wait. He rummages in his jacket and pulls out a folded paper. He unfolds it and there he is. The _lacra_. Jack. The Joker. "We took him to a sketch artist. Once I get the word from you, we'll be able to post it all over Gotham and be able to say watch out for him. Not just as the Joker, as a civilian."

Something breaks. "Whether or not I do know who this piece of shit is, what will you do for me, huh?"

Fisher blinks and sneers, "Do what for you?"

"This Joker, he's dangerous right? _Right_?" I press the matter, feeling my rage and self-disgust surface like a rabid animal; foaming and senseless. "Then why the hell should I put my neck on the line?" I hiss.

Fisher leans down, "Because if you don't, you're going away for conspiring and associating."

I swallow and know I should get a lawyer but I do what Adriana always taught me to do. Give them breadcrumbs to follow before you bring your lawyer in. Save the big guns for later. "That guy on the paper, yeah I know him."

"How? Were you his squeeze? I wouldn't take you for his type considering he looked like he was panting after that Rachel Dawes woman. She was a lot classier than you," he eyes me and I start to grind my teeth.

"I wouldn't _touch_ him to _scratch_ him, _comprende_?" I snarl back, getting in his face but I continue to go on when he opens his mouth. "That freak comes to my workplace and wants this big order done. Kinda like a business clown suit, purple and green and psychedelic. Tells me he wants it before Halloween and I tell him I can do it. I bring it to the shop when it's done, he comes in, pays for it in cash and he walks out and I don't see him again." I pause for a long moment, staring into Fisher's eyes. "I thought it was a fucking Halloween costume. I didn't know it was a goddamn _freak-suit_ okay?!"

I lie through my teeth again. I'm not a murderer, or an _accomplice_. What I am however, is a victim of _wrong time_ and _wrong place_. I'll let him know that yeah I did know him but I didn't know he was a murderer, that I wouldn't say I saw the _lacra_ about to commit murder. It's sick. In a way, I have to cover for that-that _freak_ in order to save my own ass. If I say he did hurt me I'd catch a break. But the fact that he paid me with mob money and that I accepted and kept quiet about it; then I become an accessory. Fucking shit.

"How did you contact him to let him know when you were done? Cell phone number? Did he call from a pay phone? What?"

I shake my head, "He just" – _Broke into my home. Terrorized me. Left me mob money to pay me with. Gave me a concussion. Made me go crazy all over again_. "Checked in at the shop every few days, see if it was done."

Distantly, I wonder why the hospital, when it was so loud earlier, is now so quiet. Eerie, almost, but the thought is soon shoved away while the interrogation continues.

"And the scars didn't make you recognize him?"

I glare viciously, "I live near the Narrows. You see worse scars there, if you'd ever even been close to that fucking hell hole."

He stiffens and leans back. "So what, do you want protection?"

I gape. Seriously? I bark a short, harsh laugh, and am really fucking pleased to see him jump when I do that. "Protection? From Gotham's finest? No thank you and fuck you. You can't keep anyone safe. You're all worthless and the best chance Gotham's got of surviving is the Batman, who by the fucking way isn't able to even catch that crazy son of a bitch."

Fisher opens his mouth to say something to me before a loud knock comes at the door. "Excuse me but Ms. Hwang is due for her pain medication." Fisher turns and then whips back to look at me.

"Did you call the nurse?" he hisses.

I just shrug. I don't care. If she's got pain meds on her then whoever called her is a saint. I frown a little. The voice is deeper than my other nurse from earlier. The door opens and a nurse comes in back first, dragging a cart of medication with her. "Look, excuse me, we're in the middle of a conversation" – Fisher starts irately.

"Wha_t_ a co-inky-dink. _We_ were about to have a conversation t_oooooo_." At that voice, my heart is in my throat, choking me and drowning me and I open my mouth to yell at Fisher. I don't get to. The nurse turns with a gun in hand and blows Fisher's head off. Blood and brains smatter my face and side.

I blink and I inhale so quick it burns my lungs. I dart out from under the covers to my feet across the room, further away from the freak. Pain flares up, vicious and brutal.

There he is. Dressed in a white nurse's garb and hat and a surgical mask over his face. He's dyed his hair red. He slides the mask down and looks at me, head cocked before he hisses. "_That_ looks a little painful chi-ca," he tells me in mock sympathy. My breath comes in stutters. I might be hyperventilating.

"But I told you it would hu_rt_ you more than it'd hurt _him_, didn't I?" he shrugs and picks a needle up, squeezing so the liquid spurts out a little. He turns to me. I back myself into a corner and hunch my shoulders. He looks at me like that, my eyes darting everywhere and nowhere. I saw that I'm on the second or third floor of the hospital so I can't jump it even though I'm near a window. He giggles a bit, "_Look_, it's just your me_ds_, okay? Doctor's orders, honest," he holds up a hand, "Scout's honor." He bites his lip like he's found something incredibly amusing.

"And uh I heard you being interrogated." He waggles a finger at me. He tsks, "Naughty, naughty. _Ly_ing to the police like that." He comes closer and I slide along the wall, looking to run the hell out of this room, away from the corpse and away from the devil. "Buuuuuut I hafta give you props. Could_n't_ have lied better myself. But," he cocks his head and hunches, "You're _used_ to lying to the poli_ce_ aren't you?"

I swallow. _He heard_.

He tilts his body just away from the door, slinking closer and closer. My eyes have no direction, bouncing off of this and that, here and there. His painted face and red hair and woman clothes with hairy legs stretching out from beneath the female nurse's garb. The dark, black pool of blood edging around the bedside. I lurch forth, clumsily, on legs that weren't used for a few days and try to make it to the other side of the room.

He cackles and yanks on my arm, the one on the side I was shot in and I yell out, whimper and turn on him, writhing.

He yanks and spins me like we're fucking waltzing before I'm smacked into a wall. My eyes roll in pain and my shoulder hurts so fucking much that colors dot my ears, blood rushing in my head, a high pitched whine that makes me cringe rings in my ears. My other arm is gripped and I'm stabbed. I look down at the needle, the liquid rushing out and the needle is yanked out. A bloodspot forms under my skin.

"Shit," I mumble. 'Jack' bites his bottom lip and giggles a little, rocking on his heels and hiding the needle behind his back.

"By the uh _by_, _chi_-ca," he says and leans in, smiling and baring those yellow, yellow teeth. "This place is kind of uh wired to _blow_." He says this quietly, drawing out words and I stare at him almost incomprehensively. He came here to drug me and leave me here to blow up with the whole damn building. _Yeah, cause that makes a whole lotta fucking sense_. "And well, I came by to see my bestest bud _Harv_-eeee when! Low and behold! I hear you uh giving the policemen what's wha_t_. Chewed him up and spat him. Out. Then," he says and he snorts, trying to muffle laughter. "Then you tell him 'bout how you met _me_."

I open my mouth to defend myself or start to beg or scream but he places the flat of the blade of a jagged knife over my mouth. I freeze. "Look um fam-i-liar?" he asks, shoulders shaking a little from pent-up laughter. I cross my eyes and I feel them bulge enormously. It's my Dark Stag serrated model. _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck_.

"Yeahhhh," he drawls, and winces to take on an expression of apology, "I misplaced my other kni_ves _but I found this in your purse." He giggles, "And uh, I threw out your cigarettes," he leans closer and grins widely, scars puckering hideously. "They'd yellow your purdy _tee_th."

My heart beats so loud I think he can probably hear it. Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph what the hell am I going to do? I need to get away. I have no way of knowing he won't kill me since I've admitted that yeah I do know him without his fucking makeup and clothes. His suit's already done. My life is doomed.

"There's another cop you know," I blurt out. The Joker raises his brows and sucks on the inside of his cheeks. "He-he was partners with that-that-that," I look down at the corpse on the ground, bloody and dead, dead, dead. "_Him_. He sent him out to the car."

He nods slowly, red curls bouncing, "And whooooo does he call but _me_!" he degenerates into giggles and I stiffen further once it clicks in my head.

"But he was – and they were – and you're – but I," I've lost all means of communication. The metal feels cold to my lips.

"Ah-but! Ah-but-but-but!" he laughs after mocking me, "You're a _riot_, chica." He uses a hand to smack my cheek a couple of times and adds one that's harder than the others. I grunt but keep staring at him. "But, fortunately for you, it's true. Ol' Goren was in Maroni's pocket and so is therefore in mine now. He uh called me and asked if he should take you downtown so we could just pull a Hou_dini_ with you." I whine and try to pull away, my hospital gown leaving me uncomfortable, too open. "A-ta-ta-ta," he presses the blade down harder.

"Aaaanyway, he told me that uh your crime is basically open and shut but that he," the Joker jerks his head behind him to the dead body of Detective Fisher, "Suspected that you knew more about me. Well, if you went to trial and testified, that. Would. Just. Ruin. All. My. Fun." He says this darkly, dangerously and I tremble.

"And that's why he's dead." The Joker cocks his head to look back at Fisher. "Question of the hour is what to do with _youuuuu_." He looks at me slyly. "I could just…rrrip you to pieces like a _dog_," he cackles wildly but abruptly quiets down to whisper, "But the thing with good, honest work is that it's uh _unique_. People aren't like textiles in China. And do you know what will happen if I kill you?" a hand grips my jaw and squeezes and I wonder how the hell no one heard the gunshot from earlier. "I'll have to find a brand new tailor who won't have the same touch you do. Who won't know me like you do. Ya see," his tongue snakes out and darts at the edges of his scars, "You know _me_ just. Like. I know. _You_! And that's wh_y_," he says with a dramatic sigh, "_Kill_ing you just really won't be worth the effort."

He releases me and I slide down the wall slowly. "Because I'm going to need a tailor, ya see, I'm really bad at sewing and uh well, I'm a guy. We, you know, mess things up, a little dirt, a little tear, a bullet hole, etcetera. You feelin' me chica?"

A choked noise escapes my throat.

He leans down, pats my cheek, "Atta girl." He looks up at the clock and grins even wider, "I'm kinda on a bit of a time limit here, so toodles, and uh, remember, BIG boom." He opens his arms wide and smiles like he's seven.

He turns heel and walks out and slams the door shut behind him. I get up slowly, my knees quaking and whole body shaking like I'm possessed. The corpse of Detective Fisher stares at me accusingly: _You bitch. You did know him. You knew him personally, and he killed me so he wouldn't kill you. Now no one will know how you've let so many people die._

My hands go in my hair and yank, yank; where is everyone? Why didn't anyone come running at the sound of a fucking gunshot, and in a goddamn hospital no less. _Why won't someone find me, why doesn't anyone fucking rescue me goddamn it!?_

A part of me is disgusted at this, the part that Adriana cultivated lovingly over the years when we were friends. The broad – not woman, not girl and sure as hell not a lady – who likes to smoke every once in a while, who likes dark rum and sweet wine, who likes men an awful lot, who sees what she wants and thinks about how she's going to get it; not pine for it.

I sit there, knees cramped to my chest and I feel myself calming. _There is a _bomb_ in the building Juliana. One that he warned you about. Find some clothes so no one sees your ass when you go out. It's bad enough that the _lacra_ probably already saw it_. _We can cry about being the shittiest damsel in distress in the universe when we aren't in fucking danger anymore so move your fat ass_.

I turn my eyes from Detective Fisher whose mouth had a small amount of foamed blood around the corners to the metal cart he pushed in earlier and on the bottom I see clothes. Scrubs and shoes – loose and moveable but the tailor in me, the one who knew good fashion scowls and turns up a nose.

I reach down and undo the gown, stretching my legs into the scrubs. I wince. No panties, no bra. Dear God I hope the last person who wore this was clean. The top goes over easily and it's like wearing a fucking sheet instead of a shirt. Fucking. Huge. While I don't like skin-tight shit, I don't go around wearing XX's. I like clothes that mold well with my body-shape. My hair, I just gather in a fist and wrap it in a bun, twining around itself before pulling it tight.

The shoes are meant for feet smaller than mine by at least half a size and _goddamn_ do they hurt going on. I yank them on and tie the laces loosely, if only to help relieve the pain my feet already feel. Something at the window catches my eye and I walk towards it slowly. I look down towards the ground level.

Police cruises, highway interceptors, fire trucks, ambulances, buses and long lines of people; in scrubs, uniforms and hospital gowns. They were evacuating. They'd been evacuating while…while _when_? Where the hell was I for this evacuation? I shrug the notion off because really, it won't do me a bit of damn good and I probably need to get the hell out of here like now.

While I'm running like hell down white, sterile hallways and jumping in an elevator, running out the doors of Gotham General, it occurs to me that the Joker had been, of course, lying about something.

How the hell do I know that? Because the pain flares across my chest wound still hurt when the good pain meds were supposed to have already wiped that pain clean away.

-

_Hijo de puta estupido_ – Stupid whore son

_Crees que soy tonta algo_ – You think I'm stupid or something?

_Comprende_ – Understand/comprehend


End file.
